Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research
at Columbia University

Christiane Frey

The Poet, the Scientist, and the Bee: Before and Beyond the “Two Cultures”

In an oft-quoted simile, Bacon compares the yet-to-be established “new method” of scientific inquiry to the way of the bee. It’s a telling comparison. From antiquity to the Renaissance, the bee had served as an emblem not of the scientist or natural philosopher, but of the poet: like a bee, the poet collects from the fruits of others to create something new. In figuring the scientific method in these terms, Bacon situates science in a reservoir of procedures that we would today attribute to the humanities. Christiane Frey’s talk will explore the emergence of the discourse of modern science from a language of natural philosophy that was not yet subject to the modern divide between “poetic” and “scientific” forms of knowledge. The intent is to gain new insight less into the separation of the “two cultures” than into the conditions of their unavoidable entanglement.

Event is free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first served

More info: http://heymancenter.org/events/on-method-the-poet-the-scientist-and-the-bee-before-and-beyond-the-two-cult/