Maria Balcells

Associate Professor of Philosophy, Bucknell University

Maria Balcells is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. Her work centers on understanding the tension between our experience of a dynamic world in which time passes and an image of time consistent with our best science, whereby objects and event exist equally and eternally in a seemingly static tapestry of spacetime. She utilizes research across a variety of disciplines including cognitive science, physics, and, more recently, anthropology and Indigenous philosophies. In the past, she has served as vice-president for the Philosophy of Time Society. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her B.A. from Rutgers University.

Participant In These Roundtable Discussions

Sat
Sep 19th
2026
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It’s About TIME

This roundtable explores the tension between the physics-based view of time—which explains its directional arrow through cosmic entropy and statistical mechanics—and the human experience of time as a continuous, fluid flow championed by philosophers like Henri Bergson. By juxtaposing these scientific and intuitive perspectives, the panel seeks a potential cross-disciplinary synthesis that unites psychologists, physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers.