Trotter Paterson Lecture – Colin Blakemore

18 February, 2014 (17.30 – 21.00).
The Bishopsgate Centre, London

The Society of Light and Lighting present the 2014 Trotter Paterson Biennial Lecture given by Colin Blakemore, Professor of Neuroscience & Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience, University of Oxford

His lecture, Vision Impossible, will take place on February 18 from 17:30 at the Bishopsgate Institute.

We experience the world subjectively like a detailed, seamless, real-time video stream. The conventional goal of both scientists and philosophers is to understand how our continuous, apparently veridical experience of the world is generated from the retinal image. In reality, visual experience is discretely and sparsely informed by data from our eyes. Shifts of gaze, occurring about three times each second, deliver data-dumps to the brain, with most of the informational content concerned with the portion of the image falling on the central fovea of the eye. During each snapshot, the brain gathers, encodes and stores only a tiny amount of information, probably corresponding to the content of visual attention. The task of scientists and philosophers is to account for the miraculous transformation of that which converts so little into so much. And if conscious awareness is largely invented, why do we need to be conscious of anything?

The audience will be welcomed by Kevin Kelly, the SLL’s President and the evening will be introduced by Peter Phillipson.

Doors will open at 17:30 with light refreshments and the evening will begin at 18:15 sharp. There will be a reception with canapés after the lecture.

About The Trotter Paterson Lectures

The Trotter Paterson Lecture was created in 1951 as a biennial event to commemorate two past presidents of the Illuminating Engineering Society (which later became the Society of Light and Lighting), Alexander Trotter (president 1917 – 1920) and Clifford Paterson (1928). Both were founder members of the Society in 1909 when Paterson was in charge of the Electro-technical and Photometrical Department of the National Physical Laboratory and Trotter was electrical advisor to the Board of Trade.

This is a free event but booking online is necessary.

24 Jan