The Library as Reality and Metaphor Saturday, January 28th, 2017 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » One of the habits of the mind is the invention of horrible imaginings. The mind has invented Hell, it has invented predestination to Hell, it has imagined the Platonic ideas, the chimera, the sphinx, abnormal transfinite numbers (whose parts are no smaller than the whole), masks, mirrors, operas, the teratological Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the unresolvable Ghost, articulated into a single organism ….… read more »
Pain Saturday, February 11th, 2017 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » Wisdom comes alone through suffering. Still there drips in sleep against the heart, grief of memory. – Aeschylus, Agamemnon What is it to feel pain? We sense it in the body, as a non-trivial, unmediated and imperative perceptual event associated with tissue damage, possessing particular spatiotemporal characteristics of a physical object (e.g.,… read more »
The Displaced and The Other Saturday, February 25th, 2017 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » Generationally and historically, our species has moved through great migrations, across seas, continents, and borders. Some have been journeys infused with hope for the better, or impelled by longing for the unknown, the foreign, the other. Others have been forced. Today, with more than 65 million refugees and displaced persons around the globe, we are bearing witness to flights of desperation, escaping threats of extinction or submission, environmental disaster, religious and tribal conflict, slavery, and war.… read more »
Music to Whose Ears III: Music and Healing Saturday, March 11, 2017 at 2:30pm EST Past Event Watch the video » There are well-known therapeutic effects of melody and rhythm on people with various cognitive and motor problems such as non-fluent aphasia, autism, Alzheimer disease, and Parkinson’s disease. By helping alleviate pain and anxiety, music can be also beneficial for preterm babies and for patients before and after surgeries.… read more »
Design in Nature Saturday, April 22nd, 2017 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » Though human ingenuity may make various inventions…it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous… – Leonardo da Vinci, The Da Vinci Notebooks, Vol.… read more »
Complexity and Emergence II: Visions of Cosmic Order, from Particles to People 2:30 pm on Saturday, May 20th, 2017 Past Event Watch the video » What principles of order underlie the ascent of complexity, from the simplest particles of physics heralding the birth of the universe, through biological forms, to the achievements of civilization? Has a recurrent theme of combination and integration led to multiple fundamental levels from quarks to culture?… read more »
“Fake” Knowledge: Knowing and the Illusion of Knowing Saturday, October 14th, 2017 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » A nomenclator was a slave whose duty was to accompanying his master in canvassing the streets of Classical Rome in order to recall the names of those his master encountered. Each of us is, in a way, both that ancient politician and that slave, relying on others’ memories to supply us with knowledge, and others relying on us for the knowledge we recall for them.… read more »
American Poetry Today Saturday, November 18th, 2017 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » The American poet Ezra Pound proclaimed that “Poetry is news that stays news!” On a different note, his contemporary William Carlos Williams said that “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.”… read more »
Art and Science: The Two Cultures Converging December 1-3, 2017 Past Event Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it.… read more »
Science-Art Collaboration 1 Friday, December 1st, 2017 Past Event Watch the video » Collaboration between the arts and sciences has a rich history dating back to the Renaissance, and recently experienced a resurgence in the 1960s with the art-engineering group Experiments in Art & Technology. Even more recently, artists have begun to actively collaborate with scientists in all disciplines to expand their artistic reach.… read more »
STEAM & the Future of Education 1 Saturday, December 2st, 2017 Past Event Watch the video » STEAM – or ScienceTechnologyEngineeringArtMathematics – is the hot topic educational movement sweeping our nation and the world. Growing out of the emphasis to get more students in STEM subjects to remain a scientific and technologically advanced nation, STEAM was born in 2008, and advocates for the integration of arts and design learning in STEM.… read more »
Science, Art & Society 1 Saturday, December 2nd, 2017 Past Event Watch the video » The multi-directional relationship between science, art, and society is in great need of repair. Due to the casting out of beauty from art and validity of facts from science by Postmodernism, art and science both suffer from a disconnect with the public.This… read more »
Science-Art Collaboration 2 Saturday, December 2nd, 2017 Past Event Watch the video » Collaboration between the arts and sciences has a rich history dating back to the Renaissance, and recently experienced a resurgence in the 1960s with the art-engineering group Experiments in Art & Technology. Even more recently, artists have begun to actively collaborate with scientists in all disciplines to expand their artistic reach.… read more »
Steam and the Future of Education 2 Saturday, December 2nd, 2017 Past Event Watch the video » STEAM – or ScienceTechnologyEngineeringArtMathematics – is the hot topic educational movement sweeping our nation and the world. Growing out of the emphasis to get more students in STEM subjects to remain a scientific and technologically advanced nation, STEAM was born in 2008, and advocates for the integration of arts and design learning in STEM.… read more »
Science, Art & Society 2 Sunday, December 3rd, 2017 Past Event Watch the video » The multi-directional relationship between science, art, and society is in great need of repair. Due to the casting out of beauty from art and validity of facts from science by Postmodernism, art and science both suffer from a disconnect with the public.This… read more »