In the aftermath of Ordered Universe gatherings I find myself time and again struck by how little appreciation I normally give to the complexity of the natural world. So many fundamental properties of the physical universe I usually take for granted, without even giving it a thought that someone would have some sort of explanatoryContinue reading “What a wonderful world – aha-moments triggered by insights into a medieval thinker’s mind”
Author Archives: ulrikenowak
Grosseteste goes public: disseminating medieval and modern science
The Mahfouz Forum on Grosseteste’s De generatione sonorum (On the generation of sound) culminated in a set of public lectures held in the Pichette Auditorium of Pembroke College. With this having been the third time that I got to enjoy being part of an Ordered Universe gathering, I had heard before some elements of theseContinue reading “Grosseteste goes public: disseminating medieval and modern science”
Pembroke College Oxford – a Very Short Introduction
After workshops and conferences held in Durham, Porto and Lincoln, it seems only right that the interdisciplinary and international team of the Ordered Universe Project is now meeting in Oxford – the very place where Grosseteste spent part of his early scholarly career and where today the Bodleian and College libraries keep many of theContinue reading “Pembroke College Oxford – a Very Short Introduction”
Grosseteste – a theologian and scientist. Or: Did Grosseteste see a science-religion divide? Further Reflections on the Network…
To me, one of the most fascinating aspects of studying Grosseteste is that he wrote about both theology and science (in the medieval sense). The first-time, non-medieval reader is quick to ask herself whether Grosseteste had some split-brain features; after all religion and science often take opposing stances in contemporary debates. As Giles Gasper mentionedContinue reading “Grosseteste – a theologian and scientist. Or: Did Grosseteste see a science-religion divide? Further Reflections on the Network…”
Interdisciplinarity – chances and challenges
It took me some time to realise how rare truly interdisciplinary work is at the research level. For me as an undergraduate student, cross-subject talk within friendship groups is something that I have always taken for granted. Since I have been introduced to the Ordered Universe Project I have learned firstly that only few scholarsContinue reading “Interdisciplinarity – chances and challenges”
How history of science informs individual development of scientific reasoning and supports a reflective perspective thereon
Per Kind, at our October workshop, put forward the idea that informative parallels can be drawn between the development of science-knowledge across chronological time, i.e. the history of science, and the development of scientific reasoning within the individual, across developmental time. This opens up an indirect way of how studying Grosseteste and his time canContinue reading “How history of science informs individual development of scientific reasoning and supports a reflective perspective thereon”
Cool for School: A Grossetestian framework for teaching scientific knowledge and how science works
Nowadays teachers are expected to have clearly defined learning objectives for every lesson, but more fundamentally it must be definedwhat the overall aims of education should be. These seem to cluter around the acquisition of firstly a broad and in-depth knowledge base across the disciplines, and secondly of procedural skills that enable students to criticallyContinue reading “Cool for School: A Grossetestian framework for teaching scientific knowledge and how science works”
How Grosseteste could help in conveying a ‘grasp of scientific practice’
In recent years science education has moved progressively further away from teaching students scientific facts towards conveying an understanding of how science works, or of the Nature of Science (NOS). One attempt in this respect has been to define a set of necessary and sufficient criteria that distinguish good from bad scientific inquiry, and toContinue reading “How Grosseteste could help in conveying a ‘grasp of scientific practice’”
Why the scientists?
At the heart of the Ordered Universe Project is the interdisciplinary collaboration between medievalists and scientists. In this way light is shed onto Grosseteste’s scientific work from very different angles, and this allows for an all-around and in-depth elucidation of his writings. That medievalists contribute to our understanding of medieval science seems straightforward and notContinue reading “Why the scientists?”
The educational strand – ideas from the student perspective
When I first read about the idea of linking the Ordered Universe Project to education, I was fascinated by the parallel drawn between knowledge development across time, within the individual on the one hand and in the history of science on the other. It seems to me to be an intriguing suggestion that there mayContinue reading “The educational strand – ideas from the student perspective”