At the Bell House with Sean Carroll

Jerry Alper in Existential Cosmology:

On May 8, in Manhattan, I had met with Sean Carroll for a prearranged interview on his forthcoming The Big Picture. The three hour conversation that ensued had been an exhilarating, if somewhat overwhelming experience. Before I could write about it, however, I needed to process it. Sean Carroll, for his part, wanted to do “some writing” in preparation for his scheduled May 10th talk at the Bell House in Brooklyn. This was the event that would kick off the grand book tour of his much-anticipated, new book, the wildly-ambitious, magisterial synthesis called simply The Big Picture. The pub. Date (May 10th) was two days away but already the reviews from some of the brightest names in science were starting to arrive. Here, for example, is what the brilliant quantum experimental physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder, says about the Big Picture.

“The Big Picture is, above everything else, a courageous book — and an overdue one. So, I am super happy about the book. The Big Picture should make clear that physicists aren’t just arrogant when they say their work reveals insights that reach far beyond the boundaries of their disciplines. Physics indeed has an exceptional status among the sciences.”

Be that as it may, I was of two minds about actually travelling to the Bell House which I had never heard of and to which I had never been (but to which I’ve now been invited to). On the one hand — the event being scheduled between 8 p.m. — 11 p.m. — I would be lucky if I could arrive home before midnight. On the other hand, this was a rare opportunity, perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity, to see Sean Carroll lecture in person and I did not want to miss out on it.

More here.