May is the season for the Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. This year, the 53rd congress, saw the Ordered Universe present two panel sessions on Structures of Order in Medieval Science. The first, Experience and Authorities featured Nicola Polloni (Durham but imminently the Continue reading “The View from Kalamazoo”
Last week, following the Ordered Universe symposium at McGill, various members of the team stayed on and enjoyed a second event with our friends in Montreal. Organised between Durham University’s Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and McGill University, we took part in a joint graduate conference on 7th May. Taking place at Continue reading “Movement(s) of the Middle Ages – McGill/Durham 2018”
Last week the Ordered Universe team met at McGill University, Montreal. Some 18 members of the core group, from Durham, York, Oxford, Lincoln, Beirut, Siena, Berlin, Washington DC, Toronto, and the home team from Montreal, gathered together in the Continue reading “Moving objects, and heavenly bodies: Ordered Universe at McGill, Montreal”
Our next symposium is nearly upon us, this time at McGill University in Montreal, hosted by Faith Wallis. The programme is available in pdf form, or on Issuu. The three texts for scrutiny are On the Six Differences, On the Movement of Celestial Bodies, and On Bodily Motion and Light, which open up new territory for the collaborative reading sessions. Embodied light, the nature and cause of motion, and the notion of place – with the usual Continue reading “Guiding Stars, Motion and Light”
One of the wider activities with which the Ordered Universe is engaged is the OxNet access initiative, which seeks to place university learning directly into schools. In the case of the collaboration with Ordered Universe this involves team members bringing the world of medieval science and of the array of disciplines that make up the project to Continue reading “OxNet & Ordered Universe: Seminars and Easter School in the North-East Hub”
A free public lecture from the Ordered Universe team on the world of Robert Grosseteste, sounding objects, how contemporary science finds its cultural and intellectual identity, the importance of listening to the past and how delicate what we know turns out to be, science, religion and Grosseteste’s contested legacy between English Protestant and Catholic authors – all in an hour!
Ordered Universe is off on its travels. Fresh from our project conference, Easter School and participation in other conferences and colloquia, the next symposium takes place in Canada, at McGill University, Montreal. We are delighted to be hosted by Professor Faith Wallis, a core team member, and are very much looking forward to four days of collaborative reading in such a stimulating environment. Three texts are on the menu, a re-reading of Grosseteste’s On the Six Differences edited and translated by Sigbjørn Sønnesyn on notions of the horizon and up/down/left/right/back/front, and two new ones. The first is On the Supercelestial Motions, edited by Cecilia Panti, and newly translated by Neil Lewis, the second On Corporeal Motion and Light, edited and translated by Neil. These are the tenth and eleventh of Grosseteste’s scientific opuscula to be tackled by the team, thirteen in total. As we work through the texts, the sense of the intricacy and intensity of Grosseteste’s thought comes to the fore time and again. In the texts to be considered roots of characteristic aspects of his later thought emerge, for example the identification of nature with the first form, namely light. More than shades of On Light…
The symposium will also feature a public lecture to be delivered in the Redpath Museum, by Tom McLeish, Giles Gasper and Jack Cunningham, with details to follow. The symposium will be followed by a graduate conference at McGill, and then by members of the team making their way steadily westwards to Kalamazoo and the International Medieval Congress. We are very grateful to Faith and to Shameem Mooradun for expert organisation, and for helping to shape our twentieth collaborative reading meeting. And they get better every time!
A wonderful feature of the Ordered Universe conference (Pembroke College, Oxford, April 3-6), was the installation by Alexandra Carr, in the Damon Wells Chapel in the college. The mysterious and beautiful structure intrigued and delighted the conference delegates, but kept us all in suspense with respect to its name. Continue reading “Keeping us all in suspense…”
Over the last two days Giles had the privilege and pleasure to engage with a European Research Council funded project, Authority and Innovation in Early Franciscan Thought (c.1220-45). Led by Dr Lydia Schumacher, the project explores in particular the Summa Halensis, one of the earliest theological compendia from the first half of the thirteenth century, and distinguished by the ambition of its enterprise and the range and volume of its questions. Continue reading “Early Franciscans: Authority, Innovation and Grosseteste”
One of the main challenges for all who study the highly variegated output produced by Robert Grosseteste over the course of his lifetime is how, if at all, his works within highly disparate disciplines may be harmonized into a coherent whole. This challenge was embodied in practice from April 3rd through 6th, when scholars from a wide range of disciplines descended on Pembroke College, Oxford, for the conference ‘Science, Imagination, and Wonder: Robert Grosseteste and his Legacy’. In order to make this an occasion for mutually fruitful exchange across – rather than merely within – the boundaries segmenting academia, Continue reading “Science, Imagination, and Wonder: Impressions and Experiences”