Science & Natural History   

Like good art, good science can cast light on what is too often in shadow. For this class, I will highlight a few aspects of your experience that have the potential to reveal for you some of nature’s hidden beauty. From these offerings, you and your classmates will choose your focus of study. Then we will start small, as befitting a scientific experiment, to boldly observe our object of interest
and analyze our findings. Discussions and reflections will disclose deeper truths and attune you to the world’s beauty. New in-person course.

Format includes discussion and hands-on learning.

Alexander von Humboldt was born in the same year (1769) as Napoleon and Wellington but was celebrated as a world citizen by Germans after his death (1859). Quickly after his death, the worth of the generalist in science such as Humboldt was being downplayed as specialists came to the fore, and he therefore became lesser known than many of these, especially in the English-speaking world. Humboldt was responsible for a doubling of known plant species in his major South American exploration trip and for a general recognition of scientific advancements in his time. This workshop will cover his life and achievements.

New in-person workshop. Format includes lecture.

SUGGESTED BOOK: The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf, ISBN 9780345806291

In his book The Analyst published in 1734, Bishop George Berkeley savaged Newton‘s calculus as nothing more than “ghosts of departed quantities.” But Newton’s work was arguably the crown jewel of the scientific enlightenment. Join us as we examine calculus from multiple viewpoints: historical, geometrical, arithmetical, scientific, and philosophical. This course is intended for curious adults, no matter their mathematical background. Students with only a dim memory of high school mathematics will still gain insights. Those with stronger backgrounds — even those who took a calculus course — will extend their knowledge and see calculus in a new light. If ever you wanted to know what calculus is about, this is your chance.

New in-person course. Format includes lecture and discussion.

Parasites come in all shapes and sizes and unless one lives in a hermetically sealed environment, an encounter with parasites is inevitable. Their involvement in our lives occurs via the food we eat, water we drink or swim in, soil we trod on, or through a variety of invertebrate hosts that transmit the little beasties to us. We will explore what it means to be a parasite; the remarkable history of discovery regarding the various stages of their life cycles; how parasites are transmitted and knowing that — how best to avoid them, common diseases they cause, their effect on host behavior, impact on history, and the possible origins of some dietary taboos. New in-person course. Format includes lecture, discussion, and hands-on.

Read and discuss the Cosmicomics stories of Italo Calvino, and then get a better grasp of the scientific roots of his fanciful, funny stories. Learn about the Big Bang, gravity, spacetime, light, magnetism, molecules, genetics, evolution, plate tectonics — you name it — and enjoy seeing how an imaginative author plays with scientific ideas. If you ran screaming from your first exposure to algebra or chemistry, here’s your chance to reopen some of the doors you closed way back then. If you love science already, here’s your chance to explore fields that are new to you.

New in-person course. Format includes lecture, discussion, and film.
FMI: Please visit scienceofcosmicomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/learning-about-science-from-cosmicomics.html

This course will examine how we know the facts of the universe, from the unimaginably distant and old to the incredibly small and strange. No math unless requested! No books required. New in-person course. Format includes lecture and discussion.

The course will consist of a narrated PowerPoint presentation with class discussion. Explore Earth history and
the evolution of life over 3 ½ billion years prior to the emergence of humanity. Learn about mass extinctions and their causes through geologic time. Survey via contemporary science journalism the many ways that human activity, past and present, has impacted planet Earth, its land, air, seas, and ecosystems. Topics will include threats to biodiversity, human population growth, development of agriculture and civilization, global land use, resource depletion, endangered fisheries, industrial and agricultural pollution, deforestation, global warming and climate change, ocean acidification and widespread extinctions.

Repeat in-person course. Format includes lecture and discussion.

Science and technology change our lives. Ideas associated with science affect how we view, and interact with,
each other and our world. It might seem that changes in science advance linearly, each dependent only upon those of the recent past. But science — and our lives— remain influenced by ideas from decades, centuries, and yes, millennia before. Some have a chequered past, with cycles of acceptance, rejection, re-acceptance. Others become dogmatic: hidden, unquestioned truths — unless or until they no longer fit with undeniable information. We will explore the stories of some science-relevant ideas: how they were initiated, changed, often rejected and rediscovered.

New in-person course. Format includes lecture and discussion.