A Naturalist's Valentine. By a Palaeontologist

BORNE upon Pterodactyle’s wing,
This heart, which once you deemed of stone,
Model of maids, to thee I bring,
And offer it to thee alone!
Not Owen pondering o’er bone
Of great Dinorius, fonder grew
Of mighty wingless birds unknown,
Than I, sweet maid, of you.

The Glyptodon, which Darwin found
Beside the South Atlantic main,
Was in no harder armour bound
Than that my spirit did enchain;
Till, bade by thee, love rent in twain
The fetters which my fancy tied
To boulder, glacier, and moraine,
And bore me to thy side!

Like some fantastic trilobite,
That perished in the Silurian sea,
And long lay hid from mortal sight,
So was the heart I yield to thee.
Now from its stony matrix free,
The palaeontologic skill
Once more hath called it forth to be
The servant of thy will.

EDWARD FORBES
Geological Society, Feb. 14

From: Daubeny, (1869) Fugitive Poems Connected with Natural History and Physical Science, 175-176.

16th February

Our next meeting will be held on Monday 16th February in the upstairs seminar room at Darwin College, from 7.30-9pm. We'll be discussing our third work of historical fiction, Russell McCormmach's Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist. I hope to see you then!

CFP - The mad scientist in 19th to 21st century fiction

Brest, 1-2 Oct 2009

The mad scientist is a complex figure which dates back to Antiquity, a time when genius and madness were perceived as complementary facets. This complementarity persists, fuelled by successive epistemological crises which question the perception human beings have of themselves and of the world around them. The figure of the mad scientist crystallizes many diffuse fears which can be political, social, religious, economic or ideological and which are related to the possibility of defining oneself as a human being (Hawthorne, Collins, Doyle, Stevenson, Stoker, Machen, Wells).

This symposium will focus on contemporary metamorphoses of the mad scientist in narratives and visual arts of the late 20th century and early 21st centuries, in the English-speaking world (A. Carter, J. Coe, P. Mc Grath, M. Amis, W. Self) but not exclusively so. Visual arts will enable us to reach beyond geographical or temporal frontiers as the mad scientist’s popularity is highly indebted to the cinema. Proposals may deal with various socio-cultural contexts and emphasize ontological, epistemological, psychological, economic or political aspects which have contributed to the persistence and aura of the figure of the mad scientist.

Abstracts should be sent before the 15th of March 2009 to: helene.machinal@univ-brest.fr or camille.manfredi@univ-brest.fr

The symposium is organized by CEIMA, HCTI, EA 4249, Université de Bretagne Occidentale

Emma Darwin's blog

'Emma Darwin' will be blogging here until 23rd February...

Rescheduled meeting - Mon 9th

The next meeting of the Reading Group has been rescheduled for next Monday, 9th February, in the upstairs seminar room at Darwin College from 7.30-9pm. We'll be discussing Measuring the World. All welcome!

BSLS 2009

The provisional programme for this year's British Society for Literature and Science conference, to be held in Reading from 27th-29th March, is now available online. Booking forms can also be found here.

2nd February

Our second meeting of term will focus on Daniel Kehlmann's recent bestseller, Measuring the World (2007 translation by Carol Brown Janeway). Copies of the book are available in Cambridge University Library, in print, and from second-hand booksellers. We hope to see you in the upstairs seminar room at Darwin College from 7.30-9pm - all welcome!

Darwin College Lectures - Darwin

The annual Darwin College lecture series begins tomorrow evening: in this anniversary year the theme is 'Darwin', and there are lots of local heroes appearing. All lectures are held at 17.30 in the Lady Mitchell Hall on the Sidgwick Site (it's a good idea to get there early).

For further information see here; for podcasts of previous years' lectures see here.









16 Jan
Professor Sean Carroll, University of Wisconsin - The Making of the Fittest

23 Jan
Professor Janet Browne, Harvard University - Darwin's Intellectual Development

30 Jan
Professor Jim Secord, University of Cambridge - Global Darwin

06 Feb
Professor Rebecca Stott, University of East Anglia - Darwin in the Literary World

13 Feb
Professor Paul Seabright, University of Toulouse - Darwin and Human Society

20 Feb
Professor Craig Moritz, University of California - Evolution and Conservation of Biodiversity

27 Feb
Professor Steve Jones, University College London - Is Human Evolution Over?

06 Mar
Professor John Dupre, University of Exeter - The Boundaries of Darwinism

Darwin, Poetry and Science

With Ruth Padel FRSL and Jonathan Howard FRS
Chaired by Randal Keynes

Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Somerset House

Monday 9 February at 6.30pm

Tickets: £8, £5 concessions. Book online or in person at the Courtauld Gallery Shop.
Doors will open at 6pm.

Further information here.

19th January

Join us for the first meeting of 2009, at which we'll kick off our discussions of historical fiction with John Banville's Doctor Copernicus. If you haven't the time to read the whole book then please focus on section III, 'Cantus Mundi'. I'll put my copy of the book in the Science and Literature Reading Group boxfile in the Whipple Library - please only read or photocopy from this in the library itself!

All welcome - hope to see you at Darwin College in the upstairs seminar room from 7.30-9pm!