With lots of activity during May and early June, and more to come over the summer, an update on Ordered Universe and related events is called for. To start with, completing the account and reflections on the trip to Boston College, and the 49th International Medieval Congress, University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo. The first conference involved, from Durham, Giles Gasper and Helen Foxhall Forbes (History), Luke Sunderland (Modern Languages and Cultures), one post-doc, Charlie Rozier (History), and three postgraduate students, all Ordered Universe regulars, Devin O’Leary (Theology and History), Sam Sargeant and Lydia Harris (English and History). Continue reading “Boston and Kalamazoo: What is Science, What is Theology?”
Clarifications on Medieval Multiverses and Multidisciplinarity
The recent interest in the Ordered Universe project following summary articles, in Nature, TheConversationUK, The Economist, The New Statesman, and various republished versions of the above, has been very gratifying (in the most part) but has also made it clear that some clarification is needed on both the way the project works, and on what we are saying. Continue reading “Clarifications on Medieval Multiverses and Multidisciplinarity”
Medieval science at Kalamazoo
So, a group of students and staff from Durham are on their way to Kalamazoo, via Boston. Giles, Devin O’Leary, Lydia Harris, Dr Helen Foxhall Forbes, Dr Luke Sunderland, Dr Charlie Rozier and Sam Sargeant, will be joining staff and students at Boston College, for a joint Postgraduate Conferenece on Medieval Studies. We represent the departments of History and English and the School of Modern Languages. Devin and Sam in particular will be speaking on aspects of medieval science, Sam on scientific knowledge in the northern lands, Iceland and Norway, and Devin the concept of scientia in the writings of William of St Thierry (d.1147). Giles will be spelling on Anselm of Canterbury (and a little bit of Grosseteste), Lydia on medicine and food in the 12th century, Charlie on the writing of history in the same period, and Luke on notions of feud and violence. Then we drive 900 miles to Kalamazoo (which really does exist)…we will keep you updated! Keep an eye out this week for more news on the project from Durham as well.
Economist reports Ordered Universe
STEM subjects and a thirteenth-century masterclass: the Economist has an article on the Ordered Universe and the work we have been conducting on the medieval multiverse. Grosseteste’s contemporary view of multiple universes came not as a cosmological question, but as one of the divine power – if God is omnipotent he could create other universes (with no further inquiry as to whether these would be similar or different to the one we live in now); the question was explored at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with refutation of Aristotle’s insistence that a universe is singular. So, all of this is a very long way from the modern theory of multiverse – and we do not suggest that Grosseteste in any way anticipated that! However, the exercise of following Grosseteste’s description of the formation of the sphere, using modern computational techniques, overlays the theories of modern cosmology on the 13th century in thought-provoking ways.
Ordered Universe: BBC Newcastle, Conversation and other news
We have passed the 25,000 reader mark on The Conversation, which is very encouraging, and the comments make interesting reading too. Also, Giles was interviewed on the Ingrid Hagemann show for BBC Newcastle on Sunday – still four days left on i-Player (at around 8.40 am). Just to let you know!
Ordered Universe joins The Conversation
For those of you that know, and those that don’t, The Conversation, is a new journalism project to promote academic discourse and debate. The Ordered Universe has posted a report and discussion piece, highlighting the collaborative nature of the project, and the surprising and stimulating results of that collaboration. We have put a focus on the article just out in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, and the invitation that Grosseteste’s treatise, once puzzled through, offers to modern cosmological thought. The emphasis is surely on the invitation, and we are extremely sensitive to readings of the 13th century master which even hint at presentism or undue anachronism. Continue reading “Ordered Universe joins The Conversation”
Rainbow paper in JOSA
The paper on the De iride and modern mapping of rainbow colour co-ordinates is published formally today in the Journal of the Optical Society of America A. Volume 31, Issue 4 – and the front cover is taken from our paper, with one of Hannah’s representations of the spectra from the scattering angle and droplet radius size. The spiral mapping diagrams are both beautiful and novel. The piece advances further the work carried out in this respect on the treatise on Colour in the same journal. The rainbow treatise was probably the last of Grosseteste’s scientific writings and represents a mature and reflective style.
Embodying Grosseteste
Jack Cunningham has initiated an appeal to the Lincoln City Council for a statue of Robert Grosseteste within the city. The Ordered Universe project support this wholeheartedly, and features within Jack’s letter to the Lincolnshire Echo, copied below. With the upcoming conference on Science and Theology in the Thirteenth Century focused on Grosseteste, the appeal could not be better timed. A conjunction of form and matter to create body is all that is required….Continue reading “Embodying Grosseteste”
Critical Thinking, Critical Practice
A very interesting piece from Michael Brooks, in the New Statesman, which highlights the creative aspects of the Ordered Universe collaboration, both in terms of critical thinking, but also in terms of the way in which imaginative responses to the challenges of economic and social life can provide more than a mechanistic approach. Learning to translate, learning the patience to see what is being said and to listen carefully to how different disciplines (in our case) are expressing their points, and to what statements, conclusive or not, they are pointing, are skills too easily underestimated. The creation of environments in which these skills can flourish is surely a central task of modern academe. Critical thinking should lead to critical practice, which opens so many more approaches to the issues of the present, and the future, and making fuller use of the past.
De luce and avant-garde filmmakers in New York
A very interesting project, about which we’re intrigued to find out more.