At the Arts ⁄ Science Interface
- ENGINEERS’ CORNER
- CLOSE ENCOUNTERS of the TRIPLE KIND.
- OUT of AFRICA … THE STORY of YOU…
- ARTS/SCIENCE ‘ENCOUNTERS’: a Review
- ARTSCIENCE: first look-ahead to 2010
- Upon a Peak in Darien… New Vistas from Old Places
- CP Snow: Only Connect
- Whose Rise and Fall …?
- How Many Cultures? CP Snow and the Darwin Legacy
- Creative Break-Through at Sheffield University
The Ideas Exchange
What You've Been Saying
The Ideas Exchange
What Others Have Said
The PEST Anthology
- YET MORE PEST POEMS
- More ‘PEST’ Poems
- PEST Inaugural
- A Work in Progress: Poetry of Science and Technology
The CVN Archive
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Creative Break-Through at Sheffield University
Just Started! A series of sixteen ‘ARTS-SCIENCE ENCOUNTERS’ which will be putting Sheffield University firmly on the cross-disciplinary map by mid –year.
Having had the privilege of discussing it with its co-ordinator Rachel Falconer, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University, I strongly recommend that you go to http://www.shef.ac.uk/english/arts-science ; and since all events are open to the public, that you try to navigate your diaries through to mid-June so as to take in one or more of some very exciting planned events.
For the programme promises precisely the explosive mix of cross-disciplinary ideas for which CVN pleads: speakers from more than twenty disciplines – including Physics, Literature, Design, Chemistry, Music, Law, the Neurosciences; presented by both internal and external specialists, researchers and performers of the quality of Ruth Padel ( poet, novelist and author of ‘Darwin – A Life in Poems); science-writer /biographer Richard Holmes ( ‘ The Age of Wonder’); systems-biologist Denis Noble( ‘ The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome’). And many others.
I certainly plan to be at several of these ‘Encounters’ and will have much more to say about them -and what might follow – in due course. It will not surprise you to learn that the sessions on ‘Music, Bird-Song and Brain-Science’ and ‘Darwin, Creativity and Truth’ are among my personal choices!
This series of events is dedicated, as a celebration of an exceptional life, to the late Jeremy Knowles who, after Oxford, became the long-term Amory Houghton Professor of chemistry and bio-chemistry at Harvard, and a distinguished researcher. Since he was also an accomplished pianist, organist and devotee of Bach, it comes as no surprise to CVN that his niece and god-daughter (Rachel Falconer) should have devised these ‘Encounters’, with her colleagues across the faculties, as an appropriate way to honour him. In so doing they also boost the Arts/Science agenda.
For the moment I will simply say how welcome this initiative is, and wish it deserved success.