University Lecture with Pamela H. Smith: “Snakes, Lizards, and Manuscripts: Humanists in the Laboratory”

President Lee C. Bollinger and Provost John H. Coatsworth host the

University Lecture

with

Pamela H.  Smith Professor of History
“Snakes, Lizards, and Manuscripts: Humanists in the  Laboratory”
The  empirical techniques of experiment and observation employed in the natural  sciences since the Scientific Revolution have important origins both in the  accurate description and eyewitness practiced by Renaissance historians and in  the creative labors of Renaissance artists’ workshops. But since the seventeenth  century, these shared origins have been obscured, and the divisions between the  natural sciences and the arts and humanities have become wider; scientists work  in the lab and historians work in libraries and archives. Studying the  pre-modern artist’s workshop provides an opportunity for the historian to enter  the contemporary laboratory. Drawing on techniques from both laboratory and  archival research, this lecture crosses the science/humanities divide and  explores the surprising relationships between manuscripts and experiments;  between today’s lab and yesterday’s workshop; and between early modern  conceptions of nature and our own understanding of science, art, and  scholarship.
The  lecture will be followed by a question and answer session with the audience.
Online registration is required and will open on  Wednesday, November 13 at 11:00 a.m.

Please visit here to register online: http://universityprograms.columbia.edu/#%21/university-lecture-given-pamela-h-smith