How has stargazing shaped our understanding of the world and our place within it? How have changes in our conception of the universe altered our understanding of human nature—and vice versa? While we tend to conceptualize art and science as separate spheres, astronomy has always been interwoven with culture, and artists and astronomers continue to draw inspiration from one another even today. This team-taught course traces the shared, often symbiotic, history of these two ways of knowing and exploring the cosmos. Combining scientific instruction with discussion and analysis of literature, the visual arts, music, and theater, the course culminates in creative artistic projects that draw on astronomy and the history of human stargazing.
We will examine three distinct phases in scientific understanding: the earth-centered systems of the Ancient Mediterranean and Central America, the sun-centered system developed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, and the radically uncentered, infinitely expanding universe of twentieth-century science. Students will observe the apparent motion of heavenly bodies across the sky, and will learn how that motion was explained in antiquity—as well as how it was harnessed for the creation of calendrical time. Students will make telescopic observations of the moons of Jupiter, and grapple with the paradigm shift of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Finally, students will learn about Hubble’s use of spectroscopy and red shift observations in the development of the Big Bang Theory.
In connection with these distinct phases, or epistemes, we will examine ancient astronomical artifacts, calendrical systems, the Music of the Spheres, the Great Chain of Being, early and more recent science fiction, Romantic-era stargazing, and twentieth-century avant-garde music and art.