By INAM UL HAQ

Prof. Brian D. Josephson, Nobel laureate in physics, visited Tsinghua University on May 13. Prof. Josephson lectured students and faculty of Tsinghua at the Main Building and had a discussion with Tsinghua Vice President Yuan Si prior to the lecture. Prof. Zhu Bangfen, Chair of Tsinghua’s Department of Physics and a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences hosted the lecture and introduced Prof. Josephson to the audience.

A world renowned physicist from Cambridge University, Prof. Josephson, delivered his speech entitled, ‘Life, Extended Mind and Physical Reality’ under Global Vision Lecture Series. He talked about new paradigms of physics and said current paradigms are unable to define order in nature. “Conventional physics didn’t offer much opportunity to achieve breakthrough. Many sense that more order is present in nature than defined by current paradigm,” he said.

Seventy-year-old physicist, who won Nobel Prize in 1973, said his current work on new paradigms of physics involve study of order, language, and higher states of consciousness and the paranormal.  But he said it is difficult and quite elusive to characterise this order. Problem in traditional physics is observer quantum mechanics, interpretational issues and non-locality. He also talked about relationship between mathematics and music saying both are universal language.

Prof. Joseph elaborated in detail chaos and complexity in order. “Chaos means we can not know what is happening, but it has its own order, which characterises life,” he said.

Prof. Joseph’s speech was followed by a lively interactive session in which a number of students asked questions. Besides hundreds of Tsinghua students, students from Peking University, University of Science and Technology Beijing and other neighbouring universities attended the lecture.

(Photo by Guo Haijun)