Brain and Mind

Abstract

For such a long time, ever since my high school years so long ago, I have felt a strong attraction to philosophy. Many years later, my interests were attracted towards physics, besides my main love, art. The reason for my interest was mainly because I felt, and definitely still feel, that the questions raised by philosophers and physicists are quite similar. Well, only a week ago, I had a great opportunity to meet George Ellis and his wife Carole. George is a well-known theoretical physicist, professor of complex systems in the department of mathematics and applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Physicist, mathematician, cosmologist. He co-authored the famous monograph “The large scale structure of Space-Time” with Stephen Hawking. George Ellis is an authority on the Big Bang. He has won the Templeton prize and was awarded the “Order of the Star of South Africa” by the late Nelson Mandela. Indeed, he has received many more prestigious prizes for his approximately five hundred scientific papers. Professor Ellis is a cosmologist who also focusses his attention on the more philosophical aspects, and this makes him different from other cosmologists. The first time I met him, my impression was that George was a very nice person. I labelled him “nice George”. I did not know what an important physicist he was! In fact, he is not only nice George, but a very famous cosmologist and a leading theorist.