British Society for the History of Science: Global Digital History of Science Festival

Ordered Universe members will be taking part in the Global Digital History of Science Festival, organised by the British History for the History of Science. Tom McLeish and Shazia Jagot, from the University of York, along with Laura Cleaver, School of Advanced Study, London, and Giles Gasper, Durham University, will be presenting a grand tourContinue reading “British Society for the History of Science: Global Digital History of Science Festival”

Getting ready for Light Up Poole

Fresh from its US premiere at the Napa Lighted Art Festival, California, Horizon created by The Projection Studio in collaboration with Ordered Universe, and using imagery from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, receives its European premiere in the coming week at the Light Up Poole Festival. The show, elaborates Grosseteste’s treatises On the Sphere and On the Six Differentiae. TheContinue reading “Getting ready for Light Up Poole”

New Year? New Symposium!

  The Ordered Universe team are throwing themselves into 2018 with another symposium that will focus on preparing our collaborative editions and translations of the shorter scientific works of Robert Grosseteste. The symposium will be held Jan 7th–10th 2018 at Pembroke College, Oxford, and this time around the team will be reading Robert Grosseteste’s De cometis, DeContinue reading “New Year? New Symposium!”

Colour, Light, Glass and Exploding Rainbows

Our Through a Glass Darkly meeting last week gave a considerable amount of food for thought. Catching up with the progress that the Ordered Universe team have made on Grosseteste’s treatises over the last three symposia On the Liberal Arts, On the Generation of Sounds, On the Six Differences, On the Sphere and the very first glimpses of On Comets was a reminder, again, ofContinue reading “Colour, Light, Glass and Exploding Rainbows”

Grosseteste on Space and Place

  The latest in the series of Ordered Universe symposia took place last week, between 1st and 3rd September. We gathered in Durham once more, in the hospitable surroundings of St John’s College, to examine two of Grosseteste’s treatises, and review progress on those now in the publication roster (on which more soon). The meetingContinue reading “Grosseteste on Space and Place”

Space and Place: Ordered Universe Symposium

The next Ordered Universe symposium takes place at the beginning of September. From 1-3 various members of the research team will meet at Durham University, at St John’s College, to continue the programme of collaborative reading. The symposium will see the second reading of the treatise De sphera – On the Sphere, the first of the next text inContinue reading “Space and Place: Ordered Universe Symposium”

Welcome to new OU researchers

The Ordered Universe project is pleased to welcome two new researchers to the project. Jack Smith, an Engineering undergraduate student from Pembroke College, University of Oxford, and the Department of Engineering Science, has been appointed to a summer studentship. His project will be to work with Clive Siviour and Hannah Smithson, and other members ofContinue reading “Welcome to new OU researchers”

“Education is all about changing your mind.”

This is a quotation from Kathy Bader, one of the PhD students involved in the Ordered Universe Project. It sums up an almost self-evident truth, and nonetheless it’s something one can sometimes forget when it comes to thinking about choosing between courses or jobs or generally between things to which one could devote one’s timeContinue reading ““Education is all about changing your mind.””

Back to the roots

During the most recent of the Ordered Universe Symposia, medieval specialists and modern scientists applied their minds to Robert Grosseteste’s De sphera (On the sphere). In this early treatise of his, Grosseteste describes the movements of the heavenly bodies in the firmament according to the observer’s position on earth. The astronomical knowledge available during theContinue reading “Back to the roots”

‘Writing is thinking.’

Collaborative reading sessions very much form the backbone of Ordered Universe Symposia. The members of the interdisciplinary working group sit around a large table and go through the draft translations provided by Sigbjorn Sonnesyn, and they often find themselves discussing how to best render individual Latin terms in English. The ideal translation conveys what GrossetesteContinue reading “‘Writing is thinking.’”