An online panel discussion of the 2016 film Arrival, based on Ted Chiang's science fiction novella "Story of Your Life" will be hosted by the following departments at The Ohio State Univerity: Astronomy, Linguistics, Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP), and Philosophy.
When
Wednesday, July 29, from 8:00-9:00 PM EDT
How to Join
To participate in this event, watch Arrival at home – it’s available on many platforms including Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, and Apple TV. Register for the webinar for free by clicking here or the button below. Registration is required in order to attend. This webinar is hosted on Zoom and will include ASL interpreting and live CART captioning.
Background and Event Panelists
Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forrest Whitaker, is an emotionally gripping film about alien visitors that deals with deep issues of physics, the nature of time, and the structure of language.
- Does time always flow in one direction?
- What is the relation between time and causation?
- How does our experience of time structure our language, and how might language structure our experience of time? How is time wired into the physical world?
- How could we learn to communicate with beings whose way of thinking is radically different from our own?
Arrival engages all of these questions, and many more. We encourage you to bring your own questions to the webinar and be ready for a lively discussion.
To get even more out of this event, read the novella “Story of Your Life,” which is published in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang, copyright 2002, available in print and Kindle editions from Vintage Books. “Story of Your Life” won the 2000 Nebula Award for best novella, and all of the stories in this collection sparkle with brilliant ideas.
Panelists:
Dr. David Weinberg, Ohio State Department of Astronomy, cosmologist and astrophysicist
Dr. Micha Elsner, Ohio State Department of Linguistics, computational linguist
Dr. Julia Papke, Ohio State Department of Linguistics, linguistics and ancient languages
Dr. Richard Samuels, Ohio State Department of Philosophy, philosophy of cognition
Moderator:
Anna Voelker, Ohio State Department of Astronomy and CCAPP
