Some Sydney lectures I will miss

Because I will be en route when they pop up:

Sydney Ideas Key Thinkers Lecture Series

23 September
JOHN RAWLS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE
Professor Duncan Ivison, Professor of Political Philosophy and Head of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI)

John Rawls (1921-2002) has been hailed as one of the most important liberal political philosophers of our times. He is best known for his hugely influential book, A Theory of Justice (1971), which defended a vision of social justice in which individual rights and social equality were seemingly reconciled … something many consider to be impossible. For Rawls, justice was the “first virtue” of social and political institutions and should structure the way fundamental rights and opportunities (as well as burdens) are distributed in a society. His conception of “justice as fairness” attempted to reconcile the often competing ideals of liberty and equality by setting out principles of justice that individuals, conceived of as rational and “free and equal”, would be willing to accept. Technically innovative, often dizzyingly abstract and yet deeply informed by the history of philosophy, Rawls’s work has shaped philosophical thinking about justice-for better or worse-ever since.

30 September
KURT GÖDEL AND THE LIMITS OF MATHEMATICS
Professor Mark Colyvan, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science

Kurt Gödel was one of the foremost mathematicians and logicians of the 20th century. He proved a number of extremely surprising results about the limitations of mathematics. Perhaps the most significant of these is his celebrated incompleteness theorem, which tells us that there are mathematical “blind spots”: parts of mathematics that traditional methods of proof cannot access. These results are thought by many to have far-reaching consequences for computing and for our understanding of the nature of the human mind. Gödel’s results have thus been the subject of a great deal of popular attention. Indeed, few other results in the history of mathematics have had such an impact outside of mathematics. For those of us who have never heard of Gödel, this lecture will give an accessible outline of his work and achievements.

Venue: Lecture Theatre 101, New Sydney Law School Building, Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
Time: 6.30pm to 8.00 (includes Q & A)
Cost: Free events, no booking or registration required

I’m annoyed to miss Mark’s talk, because he’s one of the best speakers on mathematics I’ve ever heard. And he, too, has an Erd?s number of 3.