Rob Iliffe: The Triumph of the Scientific Imagination 1760-1900 POSTPONED

Event Description:

Much has been written about the contexts surrounding the exaltation of the creative imagination in literature at the end of the eighteenth century. The notion was crafted in the light of new conceptions of authorship and in opposition to what were perceived to be democratizing, secularizing and materialist tendencies in society. In this talk, Rob Illife discusses the reasons behind the dramatic elevation of the imagination in Enlightenment science, and examine the key role attributed to the imagination in a variety of accounts of creative scientists and inventors. The appreciation of the imagination as a necessary attribute of the creative individual existed alongside a continuing recognition that those with powerful imaginations often dealt with, or at least courted fiction and error. In an age of increasing globalization and industrialization, and despite continuing suspicion of their ideas and projects, the imaginative power of scientific and inventive geniuses came to be held up as the defining characteristic of Western rationality.

Event Speaker

Rob Iliffe is Professor of History of Science at Oxford, Co-Director of the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology. He has published widely on topics in the history of early modern and Enlightenment science, and particularly on historical interactions between science and religion, scientific voyages of discovery, and the role of scientific instruments in scientific innovation.

Event Information:

This event is free and open to the public.

This event is part of the New York History of Science Lecture Series.

Sponsoring Organizations:

• The University Seminars at Columbia University
• Columbia University in the City of New York
• NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study
• The Graduate Center, City University of New York
• The New York Academy of Medicine
• The New York Academy of Sciences