Episode 2 - The Work of Knowing

LitSciPod: The Literature and Science Podcast

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric). Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Olivia Smith (@OliveFSmith), a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Olivia discusses her work on early modern life writing and biology, exploring the importance of cognition and recognition to the pre-history of scientific research. In a wide-ranging discussion, she covers archives, letters, objects philosophical and scientific, and the relationship of the early modern imagination to interdisciplinarity. Olivia also talks about her work with the charity Arts Emergency (@artsemergency) and the importance of a political argument for access to the creative arts. At the end of the episode, you can hear Olivia read the poem ‘A World in an Eare-ring’, by Margaret Cavendish (1623-73). Episode resources (in order of appearance): Introduction Sydney Ross, ‘Scientist: The Story of a Word’, Annals of Science, 18:2 (1962): 65-85 William Herschel, Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830) Leah Knight, ‘Historicising Early Modern Literature and Science: Recent Topics, Trends, and Problems’, Journal of Literature and Science, 5:2 (2012): 56-60 John Donne, ‘Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star’ T. S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ Majorie Hope Nicholson, Science and Imagination (1956) Steven Shapin and Simon Scahffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump (1985) Howard Marchitello, The Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo (2011) Carla Mazzio, ‘Shakespeare and Science, c. 1600’, South Central Review, 26:1&2 (2009): 1-23 Elizabeth Spiller, ‘Shakespeare and the Making of Early Modern Science: Resituating Prospero’s Art’, South Central Review, 26:1&2 (2009): 24-41 Interview Lorraine Daston ed., Biographies of Scientific Objects (1999) John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) Raphael Lyne, Shakespeare, Rhetoric and Cognition (2011) Catherine Charlwood, ‘Recognizing “Something”: Robert Frost and Recognition Memory’, The Robert Frost Review, 29 (2019): 31-59 Terence Cave, Recognition: A Study in Poetics (1988) Robert Frost, ‘A Patch of Old Snow’ (1916) Frances Dickey, ‘Reports from the Emily Hale Archive’ (2020): https://tseliotsociety.wildapricot.org Johannesburg Kepler, The six-cornered snowflake (1611) www.arts-emergency.org A. D. Nuttall, A Common Sky: Philosophy and the Literary Imagination (1974) Margaret Cavendish, ‘A World in an Eare-Ring’ (1653) We gratefully acknowledge the support of the British Society for Literature and Science Small Grants scheme, to enable us to make Series 2 of the podcast. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of LitSciPod - we enjoyed making it!