Within the upcoming Ordered Universe symposium in Rome, Cecilia Panti has organised a half-day conference on the subject of Time and Time Reckoning in Medieval and Contemporary Scientific Perspective. Featuring Richard Bower – Durham, Neil Lewis – Georgetown, Anne Lawrence Mathers – Reading and Philipp Nothaft – Oxford, the conference will take place at the Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”, via Columbia 1, Macroarea Lettere e Filosofia – Sala Moscati, staring at 15.00, finishing at about 18.00. All are welcome, so if you are in Rome, please come along!
The World Machine – The Final Cut
The final, and beautiful, version of The World Machine, by Ross Ashton, with Isobel Waller-Bridge and John del Nero. Testament to a great collaboration, creativity, and a fantastic location.
Wonders of the Universe
‘Wonders of the Universe’ is a public lecture from the Ordered Universe Research Project, an interdisciplinary encounter between medieval and modern science: 7th April, 2016, 18.00 in Rome, at the University of Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway (Via Ostilia, 15). The lecture is given in two parts, each of 30 minutes, by Dr Cecilia Panti, an expert on medieval philosophy, and Professor Tom McLeish FRS, an expert on physics, rheology and a keen astronomer. Between the two of them they will explore the intricacies and delights of medieval and modern thought on astronomy and planetary systems.
Cecilia will introduce one of the most famous texts on astronomy inherited by the medieval west from the ancient world, and its medieval Arabic commentators, and the fascinating story of its complex reception:
‘The Almagest of the ancient Alexandrian Ptolemy was by the end of the 12th century known to the Latin world, as was its large corpus of explanatory treatises. Robert Grosseteste was one of the first western scholars to study the Almagest, an encounter which seems to have left him more questions than answers. In his cosmological writings Grosseteste did not engage with the quantitive aspects of the Almagest, and, although appearing to reject the complexities of Ptolemy’s mathematical approach to astronomy, used other models which were even more obscure. Only with the emergence of new techniques in practical astronomy, championed by Campanus of Nova and William of Wallingford was it possible to verify and understand the approach of the Almagest, almost a century after it first appeared on the conceptual horizon of western scholars.’
Changes in practical astronomy and observation altered, radically, understanding of past texts, and the heavens. Tom takes this story on to explore the marvellous diversity of planetary bodies within the solar system:
‘Just over 400 years ago, in 1609 or 1610, Galileo identified the four largest satellites of Jupiter as true moons of the giant planet. Since then, both earth and space-based exploration of the solar system have revealed dozens of rocky worlds in orbit around the planets. These are the true occupiers of the imagined ‘epicycles’ of old rather than the planets themselves. One of the greatest surprises to emerge in this great epoch of exploration is that no two are alike. We will survey briefly ice-moons, clouded moons, volcanic moons, two-faced moons and more, in a tour of the solar system’s rich family of worlds’.
All are welcome to join us for this journey into space and time. The University of Notre Dame du Lac Rome Global Gateway, Via Ostilia 15, is found here:
The lectures will be followed by a wine reception. Entrance is free but places are limited and must be registered by email to: ordered.universe@durham.ac.uk
Medieval Physics in Oxford: Reflections by Brian Tanner
When Jo Ashbourn, Senior Tutor at St Cross College, Oxford asked me to summarize the proceedings at the end of a one day conference on Medieval Physics in Oxford, I responded enthusiastically. Several weeks later at the start of what proved to be an interesting day, I was less than certain that it had been a wise decision.
Continue reading “Medieval Physics in Oxford: Reflections by Brian Tanner”
Ordered Universe Symposium: The Appliance of Science: Astronomy and the Calendar
The next in the Ordered Universe Symposium series takes place in April, 5th-8th, in Rome. Co-sponsored by the Università di Roma Tor Vergata, and hosted in the University of Notre Dame du Lac, Rome Global Gateway, the symposium will focus on Grussetestes’s treatise De sphera, On the Sphere and his treatise on time-reckoning and the calendar the Compotus correctorius. The programme is embedded below, and includes details of a half-day conference at Tor Vergata, on Wednesday 6th April (with papers by Richard Bower, Anne Lawrence Mathers, Philipp Nothaft and Neil Lewis) and the Symposium Public Lecture to be delivered on Thursday 7th April at the Notre Dame Global Gateway (Via Ostilia 15) at 18.00 by Tom McLeish and Cecilia Panti. Any inquires should be directed to ordered.universe@durham.ac.uk. The symposium will include regular Ordered Universe participants and some for whom this is their first time: we look forward to three days of interdisciplinary engagement and exploration. Time, space, stars, planets, zodiac and the relationship of the earth to the cosmos, of humanity to creation, are some amongst the topics and questions which Grosseteste opens and to which he addresses his treatises.
Images courtesy of wiki commons and Giles Gasper.
Interdisciplinary Lessons
Lessons for Interdisciplinary Working from Medieval Science is a short piece reflecting on some of the interdisciplinary practice we have developed within the Ordered Universe project by Tom McLeish and Giles Gasper. We’ve drawn together some of the lessons that we have learnt, and some that we hope might be of use to others in similar contexts. Continue reading “Interdisciplinary Lessons”
Gravitational Waves and the Cosmic ‘Sonativum’
Only an Ordered Universe blogpost could deserve a title like that. We cannot let a discovery of such reach, beauty, conceptual depth and powerful simplicity (yes indeed) as the LIGO team’s announcement this month of the first detection of gravitational radiation go without a celebratory comment from the Robert Grosseteste club here.
Robert did, after all, engage in the magisterial De luce in the work of imagining the entire cosmos, and indeed in the propagation of waves across it in the process of its first formation. Another centrepiece of his thought world was the connection of the universal with the present and microscopic. Continue reading “Gravitational Waves and the Cosmic ‘Sonativum’”
The Wise Learn by Doing
The purpose and point of learning were questions that kept Grosseteste awake at night and dominate his surviving writings. From the treatise on the liberal arts, the first paragraph of which stresses the place of the arts in leading human operations to perfection by correcting the, to the sermons, dicta and later theological writings, the ends to which learning are directed are never far from the surface of Grosseteste’s thought. In this he was hardly unique, although his questions and reflections provoke particular interest. As Sigbjørn Sønnesyn showed in his fascinating seminar to the Durham Medieval Thought Seminar, the ways in which twelfth century western thinkers raised questions on the purpose of learning were connected intimately to their knowledge of, and engagement with, ancient models and lived experience in community. Continue reading “The Wise Learn by Doing”
Medieval Physics in Oxford
Jack Cunningham and Brian Tanner, core members of the Ordered Universe research team will be taking part in a fantastic looking conference organised by the Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics at St Cross College in Oxford. The Centre under its Director Dr Jo Ashbourn is dedicated to the philosophy and methodologies of physics past and present, and its practitioners throughout history. The Centre is holding a one-day event on Saturday 27th February at St Cross on Medieval Physics in Oxford.Continue reading “Medieval Physics in Oxford”
Words Incarnate: Durham Talk
Sigbjørn Sønnesyn will be delivering a talk in Durham this week, on subjects related to the background to Grosseteste’s intellectual formation. Speaking in the Medieval Mind Lecture Series organised by Dr Thomas Ball and Dr Sara Uckelman, of the Philosophy Department at Durham, Sigbjørn’s paper is entitled:
‘Words Incarnate: Spirituality, Experience and Epistemology in Twelfth-Century Thought’.
The talk takes place on Thursday 28th January in Engineering Room 102, between 15.00 and 16.30. All are welcome, for what is sure to be a fascinating discussion of 12th century knowledge and conceptual frameworks. And all very much relevant to the later pastoral, preaching and intellectual projects of Grosseteste. If you are in Durham or environs, we’d be delighted to see you.