Featuring: Neil Turok, Lisa Randall and Martin Cohen
We see Copernicus as a providing a key moment in history where we moved on from seeing ourselves at the centre of the universe. But our scientific accounts of the universe are inevitably constructed from our own human perspective. In so doing do we not still inadvertently place ourselves at the centre? For example, our account of the universe describes human consciousness and intelligence to be uniquely special, the universe to be strangely fine-tuned for our existence, and human size and scale to be midway between the smallest things and the largest expanses.
Should we accept that the science carries an inherent anthropomorphic bias? Is this a fundamental distortion and can we seek to overcome it? Might new forms of understanding such as AI provide a new way for the universe to understand itself? Or is the way we see the universe in fact the correct and ultimate account of how it really is?