Etienne KLEIN
Tuesday 15/10/2024- 5.30pm
503/1-001 – COUNCIL CHAMBER (cern)
https://indico.cern.ch/event/1452877
The Staff Association is pleased to invite you to the lecture: Who is qualified to talk about time
There’s a paradox surrounding the word time: while it doesn’t give rise to any difficulty when it’s involved in the fast train of an ordinary sentence containing it, it becomes very embarrassing as soon as it’s taken out of circulation to be examined on its own. As soon as it is isolated from the words that surround it, as soon as it is extracted from the verbal flow in which it has been placed, it metamorphoses into enigmas that torment the mind. What exactly is time? she asks herself. Is it a particular substance? Does it exist in itself? Or is it just a secondary entity arising from the relationships between events? Does it depend on us? Is it a product of consciousness?
How can such a familiar word give rise to such difficult questions?
Etienne Klein is a philosopher of science and director of research at the CEA. He heads the ‘Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Sciences de la Matière’ and is a member of the Académie des Technologies.
He is interested in the question of time and other subjects at the crossroads of physics and philosophy. He is also a professor at Centrale-Supélec. He speaks every Friday on France-Culture’s ‘La conversation scientifique’.