[Hum_Calendar_Events] Oct 29 - "Galileo in Hell" Symposium

[CDH Service Desk]

The UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies invites you to the symposium "Galileo in Hell" on Friday, October 29, 2010 in Royce 314.

Galileo's last and perhaps most important book, Discourses on Two New Sciences (1638), is generally considered the beginning of modern science. The book begins with a discussion of the properties and resistance of materials. With remarkable foresight, Galileo showed how the size and shape of all existing objects and living bodies, from ants to elephants, to planets and stars, are determined by a few simple rules. This powerful, novel idea and the rules, that today we call "scaling laws," are one of the most useful tools that scientists have, even now, for understanding nature.

It is tempting to say that the development of scaling laws was strongly influenced by the literary and artistic cultural environment in which Galileo received his early education. But what led Galileo to the scaling laws? This symposium, organized by Professors Massimo Ciavolella (Italian, UCLA) and Claudio Pellegrini (Physics, UCLA), will explore the connections between the beginning of modern science, the artistic, musical, and literary culture of Florence and Italy between the end on the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, and the representation of Hell in all of these forms.
9:30 Coffee, pastries

10:00 Welcoming Remarks by Lee Walcott (Managing Director Emeritus, The Ahmanson Foundation), Massimo Ciavolella (Italian, UCLA), and Claudio Pellegrini (Physics, UCLA)

10:15 Roberto Fedi (University for Foreigners, Perugia) - "Geometers in Hell"

11:00 Mark Peterson (Mount Holyoke College) - "The Mathematics of Galileo's Inferno Lectures"

12:00 Lunch Break

2:00 Gianluca Rizzo (Franklin and Marshall College) - "Frabrica Inferni: An Architectural Model for Dante's Inferno"

2:45 Paolo Fabbri (University of Venice) - "Visions of Hell"

3:30 Claudio Pellegrini (Physics, UCLA) - "Galileo, Hell, and the Moon (How the birth of modern science was helped by the Florentine literary and artistic culture)"

4:15 Concluding remarks

This symposium will be followed by the opening session of the UCLA graduate student conference "Forbidden Ideas: Controversial Modes of Engagement in Italian Intellectual Tradition." More information about the graduate student conference is available at https://sites.google.com/site/itagradconference/conference-program .
"Galileo in Hell" is generously supported by the Ahmanson Foundation. Download the symposium brochure as a PDF at http://www.cmrs.ucla.edu/programs/galileo_in_hell_revised.pdf .

Advance registration is not required. Please sign the attendance sheet at the door. No fee. Seating is limited, available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please use the Self Pay Parking in UCLA Lots 2, 3, and 5.
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