Vomiting Lobsters, Cat Pianos, and Radical Interdisciplinarity

Catalog description

This course examines the role of wonder, experiential learning, and assumptions of the balance and order of Nature in science. We will frame our inquiry through the work of the eccentric polymath and early modern scientist, Athanasius Kircher, who looked both to the past and future in the 17th century. Kircher had himself lowered into Vesuvius volcano to understand its eruptions, invented a mechanical lobster that vomited for verisimilitude, and designed a piano made of cats whose tails would be hit to create music. His work, which he framed as the ‘art of knowing’, was a form of radical interdisciplinarity. We will use Kircher’s inventions and designs as a way of bringing a sense of play and experimentation to scientific questions of the 21st century. Some of the topics we will explore include visualizations of the Earth's interior, germ theory and pandemics, automatons and cyborgs, artificial intelligence in music composition, and interplanetary exploration. We will draw on writing by and about Kircher, scientific data, film, and artist visits as well as work by Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Walter Benjamin, and Umberto Eco. Each student will create a final project that is an experiment, design, or composition which applies early modern scientific concepts to contemporary challenges such as climate change, epidemiology, or social justice.