the Ubiquity and Power of Analogies in Physics

Dr. Douglas Hofstadter
Indiana University and Stanford University

Darwin 103
3:00 PM

Dr. Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University and Stanford University will show how the cognitive mechanism of borrowing of previous ideas in physics (and often blending two or more ideas in what seems to be an utterly incoherent fashion) has repeatedly enabled physicists to come up with radically new and deeply right insights and thus to leapfrog ahead at amazing speeds.