The One

According to theoretical physicist Heinrich Päs, the universe and everything in it are one. While watching the night sky over the Atacama Desert, Päs experienced how Nature works as a “net-like intricate fabric” to which we all belong. Blending physics, philosophy, and the history of ideas, his talk – based on his book The One – takes us on an epic, mind-expanding journey through millennia of human thought and into the nature of reality itself.

“While living in Hawaii, on a small island in the midst of the vast Pacific ocean with its culture coined by the belief in “lokahi”, the harmony and unity of diverse elements, my perspective on the Universe changed, and I grasped more clearly how Nature works as a “net-like intricate fabric”.”

Heinrich Päs is a German theoretical physicist and professor at TU Dortmund University. He received a PhD from the University of Heidelberg for research at the Max-Planck-Institut in 1999, held postdoc appointments at Vanderbilt University and the University of Hawaii, and an Assistant Professorship at the University of Alabama.

His research on particle physics, cosmology and the structure of space and time was on the cover of the Scientific American and the New Scientist magazine. It also got included in the collector’s edition Ultimate Physics: From Quarks to the Cosmos, next to a piece by Stephen Hawking. His new book The One was praised in The Wall Street Journal, Nature and Scientific American. It makes the scientific case for an ancient idea about the nature of the universe: that all is One. Blending physics, philosophy, and the history of ideas, The One is an epic, mind-expanding journey through millennia of human thought and into the nature of reality itself.

For Love of the World Festival

Can we write a new story for our world? One where we live in harmony with nature, treat each other equitably and use our knowledge and technology democratically? Studium Generale TU Delft presents the For Love of the World festival, in which we invite you to join us in looking for new and different stories about the world. During this journey, we bring together technology, philosophy, and art to come to new perspectives.

We want to shape the future together with you and search for answers to the most important questions. Can we look at our place in the cosmos? How can we learn to treat the planet with more respect? And what impact does the increasing autonomy of technology have on us as humanity? We invite you to participate, to share and discover new stories together.