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Profs and Pints DC presents: “A Tour of the Multiverse,” a look at ideas explored by Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, with William Egginton, professor of humanities at Johns Hopkins University and author of the forthcoming book The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality.
The critically acclaimed film Everything Everywhere All at Once took many of us on a journey to the multiverse, where different versions of ourselves exist in parallel universes and live out different lives. The premise of a multiverse enabled the film’s screenwriters to insert new twists into their storyline, revive cherished characters, and treat us to one absurd scene after the other. But how faithful was it to the work of cosmologists and quantum theorists who have proposed the theory of a multiverse and take it seriously?
Step through the doors of Washington DC’s Penn Social to encounter the multiverse and find out what it’s about. There you’ll be guided through this scientific, philosophical, and literary labyrinth by Johns Hopkins professor William Egginton, who teaches and writes on philosophy, literature, and science—particularly physics.
You’ll learn the crucial difference between multiverse theory and the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, along with the paradoxes and problems each of the two is designed to solve. We’ll explore some of the ways in which literature and movies have exploited—and often misrepresented—these theories.
Finally, we’ll take a closer look at Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, and see how hidden in its apparent celebration of the multiverse lies a subtle and vital philosophical critique, one shared by some of the leading voices in theoretical physics.
Professor Egginton, an intellectual historian who previously has given excellent Profs and Pints talks on cosmology, folklore, and the genre of horror, will leave you convinced that somewhere in his audience was exactly where you wanted to be. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image by Gerd Altmann / Pixabay
