E. H. Gombrich Lecture Series - Lecture 3: 'Galileo's Laughter: Playing Seriously at the End of the Renaissance'
- Event type
- Lecture
- Series
- Gombrich lectures
- Address
- Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB
- Event dates
- Contact
- warburg@sas.ac.uk 020 7862 8910
E. H. Gombrich Lecture Series
Organised by the Warburg Institute and sponsored by Princeton University Press, this series features prominent humanities scholars who address pressing concerns in art, literature, and ideas, across historical periods.
Galileo's Laughter: Knowledge and Play in the Renaissance, by Professor Paula Findlen (Stanford University)
In February 1937, Johan Huizinga presented a lecture based on Homo ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (1938) at the Warburg Institute, with a young Viennese art historian, Ernst Gombrich, in the audience. Gombrich was already thinking about visual play with Fritz Saxl as well as Ernst Kris who discussed caricature in this Warburg lecture series of 1937. Laughter, jokes, play, and paradox are fundamental to understanding Renaissance culture. They also shaped the knowledge that this society produced and permeated its understanding of nature and humanity in profound ways.
These lectures offer three different perspectives on the Renaissance tradition of playing seriously. The first lecture explores why so many elements of Renaissance nature were considered supremely playful. The second lecture considers the paradoxical and enduring popularity of a strange academic joke as a means of understanding what it means to be human. The final lecture reflects on why Galileo self-conscious cultivated a reputation as the laughing philosopher of his age, a Democritus at the end of the Renaissance.
Lecture 1: Tuesday 10 September 2024: 5.30-7.00pm
Nature's Play: The Cosmic Games of Renaissance Science
Lecture 2: Wednesday 11 September 2024: 5.30-7.00pm
Are Women Human? The Strange History of a Renaissance Joke
Lecture 3: Thursday 12 September 2024: 5.30-7.00pm
Galileo's Laughter: Playing Seriously at the End of the Renaissance
Free and open to all with advance booking, in person at the Warburg Institute, or online via Zoom.
CLICK "BOOK NOW" FOR LECTURE 3 OR THE WHOLE SERIES.
TO BOOK JUST FOR LECTURES 1 OR 2 FOLLOW THE LINKS ABOVE.
image: José de Ribera, Democritus c.1630 (Prado)
