Howie Firth called Winter Light: solving a medieval worldview crisis and thinking about today

BISLA is offering a series of lectures by Howie Firth called Winter Light: solving a medieval worldview crisis and thinking about today.  The first lecture will be online on ZOOM and you can join us for that lecture and discussion on October 30 at 15:00–17:00 CERTAIN (9-10:30am EST).

Title and a short description of the lecture: Winter Light: how Descartes’ wartime journey led to a springtime of knowledge Modern science was born amid the fury of the Thirty Years’ War. Newton brought the pieces together, linking Kepler’s discoveries on planetary motion with those of Galileo of movements of objects on earth. But the key conceptual framework that made Newton’s work possible was put in place by Descartes. The man so often in the shadows played a vital role in the development of the modern worldview. Understanding him opens the way to understanding much more.

Howie Firth is a mathematical physicist by training, who took a break from research in particle physics which led into teaching, writing, broadcasting and creating science festivals. Some of his talks can be found online in Frontiers magazine, including The Earl, the Bishop and the Springtime of Science and Ada Lovelace, Enchantress of Numbers. He comes from Scotland and, among other things, organizes an annual science festival at Orkney Islands.