Multiverse Cosmologies & the Entanglement of Religion & Science

• Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Associate Professor and Chair of Religion at Wesleyan University
• Friday, April 10, 2015
• 4:15-5:30pm
• 6 Steele Hall
• Free and open to all
• Reception to follow, in Fairchild Tower area (first floor)
• Book sale & signing

Mary-Jane Rubenstein is also core faculty in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Wesleyan. Her research interests include continental philosophy, theology, gender and sexuality studies, and the history and philosophy of cosmology. She is the author of Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe and Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (which will be available for sale and signing after her talk).

Of her talk here at Dartmouth, she writes, "In recent  years, an increasing number of astro- and quantum physicists have begun to suggest that, in addition to our universe, there might be an infinite number of others—the hypothetical compendium of which has come to be called “the multiverse.” This lecture will briefly introduce different models of the multiverse in order to address its central questions:

• How did an infinite number of inaccessible universes become a respectable scientific hypothesis?
• What distinguishes multiverse cosmologies from metaphysics, fiction, or mythology?
• And can these distinctions hold, or does the emergence of multiverse cosmologies herald a reconfiguration of the very categories of physics, philosophy, and religion?"

Her talk is co-sponsored by the Dartmouth College Departments of Religion and Philosophy, the Jewish Studies Program, the Leslie Center for the Humanities, and the Carol Berkowitz Fund in Physics.