Michaelmas Term 2016 - Fire

This term the Science and Literature Reading Group is on fire. Our four themed sessions will explore flames elemental and personal, spiritual and experimental, spontaneous and accidental. As usual, we will read a diverse range of sources, including ancient philosophy, comic poetry, diary entries, experimental reports, and serialised fiction. This term an additional optional piece of scholarship/commentary has also been suggested on each reading list.

Meetings take place on Monday evenings at Darwin College from 7.30-9pm. The group is organised by Melanie Keene and Charissa Varma. For recaps, further readings, news, and other updates, watch this space!

All are welcome to join in our wide-ranging and friendly discussions!

17th October – Cosmic Fire

• Patricia Curd (ed.), A Presocratics Reader (2011), chapter 5 on Heraclitus of Ephesus.
• Brooks Haxton, ‘Fragments of Heraclitus’, New England Review 22 (2001), 15-19.
• Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection’ (1918)

Optional further reading: ‘Heraclitus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, particularly section 4, ‘Cosmology’.

31st October – Spiritual Fire

• John Tyndall, ‘On sounding and sensitive flames’, Philosophical Magazine 4 (1867), 92-99.
• W.F. Barrett, ‘Note on “sensitive flames”’, Philosophical Magazine 4 (1867), 216-222.
• [James Clerk Maxwell], ‘To the Chief Musician Upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode’, in ‘The British Association Meeting at Edinburgh’, Nature 4 (1871), 288-298, 291.

Optional further reading: Richard Noakes, ‘The “bridge which is between physical and psychical research”: William Fletcher Barrett, Sensitive Flames, and Spiritualism’, History of Science xlii (2004), 419-464.

14th November – Bodily Fire

• Paul Rolli, Joseph Bianchini and John Hilliard, ‘An Extract…Upon the Death of the Countess…’, Philosophical Transactions 43 (1744), 447-465.
• Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1852-3), chapter XXXII, 'The Appointed Time'.
• Justus von Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry (1859 4th edn), letter XXIV, 296-322.

Optional further reading: J.L.Heilbron, ‘The Affair of the Countess Görlitz’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 138 (1994), 284-316.

28th November – Fighting Fire

• Samuel Pepys, Diary, September 1666.
• ‘The Londoners Lamentation’.
• R.M. Ballantyne, Fighting the Flames (1868), chapter IV, ‘Tells of a Fierce Fight with the Flames’.
• Hilaire Belloc, ‘Matilda: who told lies and was burned to death ’ (1907).

Optional further reading: Robert M. Hazen and Margaret Hindle Hazen, Keepers of the Flame: The role of fire in American culture, 1775-1925 (1992), chapter 4, 'Fighting Back'.



If you have difficulties accessing any of the readings then please email Melanie for pdf copies!