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The Department of History Colloquium Series presents:
A Brief Theology of Time: Augustine & the Big Bang
Guest Speaker: Dr. Sean Hannan (Humanities, MacEwan University)
Day/Date: Friday, March 6, 2020
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Location: B-660
Abstract:
The final few books of Augustine's Confessions take a puzzling turn away from memoir and into cosmology. Yet this turn appears less puzzling when we connect those books to his other works, such as the Literal Meaning of Genesis. In the process of attacking Manichaean cosmology, which assumed an infinitely long past, Augustine argues that time did indeed have a beginning. In so doing, he establishes an argument that anticipates the breakthrough reached by the Belgian priest-physicist Georges Lemaître, whose notion of the primeval atom laid the groundwork for Stephen Hawking's 'Big Bang Theory.' For Augustine, however, the cosmos began not with a mathematical singularity, but with a secret origin hidden inside the 'spring' mentioned in Genesis 2.
Everyone is welcome.
Contact:
Bev Garnett | bev.garnett@uleth.ca | (403) 380-1894
