Constantino Tsallis is a theoretical physicist in the area of statistical mechanics. He is the former Head of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas (CBPF), is the founder and former Head of the National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems of Brazil (INCT-Sistemas Complexos) and is an external Professor of the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico and of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Austria. He is also a member of the Brazilian, Latin American and European Academies of Sciences. Tsallis is a nationalized Brazilian citizen who was born in Greece and raised in Argentina. 

In our wide-ranging interdialogue we began by speaking about his diverse cultural background and influences, and how those contributed to his pioneering research on foundational questions in statistical mechanics, and complexity. 

We spoke about his formulation of a nonadditive generalization of the Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy (also now frequently referred to as “Tsallis” entropy), and how this framework has fostered work on a broad range of fascinating theoretical subjects and interdisciplinary collaborations based in Q statistics. His widely cited research extends into the areas of critical phenomena, chaos, nonlinear dynamics, population evolution, cognitive psychology, high energy physics, astrophysics and cosmology, immunology and cancer, neuroimaging, economics, amongst others.

We also delved into some more abstract and philosophical topics, such as beauty, the nature of time, the meaning of science and the importance of early and broad scientific education.

00:00:00 Intro

00:04:16 Cultural influences and the development of non-additive entropy

00:27:50 Broad research experiences based Q statistics

01:00:58 The importance of interdisciplinary collaborations

01:16:32 Applying complex systems and Tsallis entropy to foundational questions

01:34:35 The meaning of science, the importance of a broad early scientific education