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Other Guildford events

To religion and beyond

A small and fairly intimate friendly venue likely to have standing room only. Just a 15 minute walk from the main train station. Venue information: https://www.yeoldeshipinn.pub/
Past event - 2017
15 May 19:00 - 21:30
Ye Olde Ship Inn, Portsmouth Rd, St Catherine's Village, ,
Guildford GU2 4EB
Sold Out!
Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how does it work?

Even in this age of cloning and synthetic biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we missing a vital ingredient in its creation?

And what really does lie in our neighbouring galaxies? From small to large – this motto also applies in space.  Tiny galaxies can merge into formidable Milky Way systems. But how do dwarf galaxies grow?

Forensically analysing galaxies

Dr Michelle Collins (Senior Lecturer)
If you’re looking for the soap actress, you’ve taken a wrong turn. This is the astronomer Michelle Collins. I’m a Galactic Archaeologist, which means I spend my days forensically analysing those galaxies that are closest to us, so that we might understand how they have formed over cosmic time. Most of my work has been on our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, and its satellite galaxies.

Ockham’s razor: the wedge between science and religion

Professor Johnjoe McFadden (Professor of Molecular Genetics at Surrey University)
William of Ockham was a 14th century Franciscan monk, born in the village of Ockham who studied theology – then known as ‘The Queen of Sciences’, at Oxford. Thomas Aquinas had made theology into a science by his five ‘proofs’ of God. William of Ockham dismantled them. With his famous razor, “Entities should not be multiplied beyond the necessity”, he separated science from religion, claiming that the first was based on reason and the second of faith. Ockham’s razor has since been used to argue for heliocentricity, Newton’s laws and evolution.
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