Robert Alexander

Quentin Compson in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury recounts how his father had described a watch as “the mausoleum of all hope and desire,” an apt reminder of how the passage of time contributes to entropy. But Quentin also remembers his father giving him the watch so that he “might forget [time] now and then for a moment.” We, too, may try to forget time through experiences such as watching a football game and focusing on the game clock. But within those experiences the experience of time, even if only psychological, remains. Similar to a substance going through the process of sublimation, these two experiences of time, while distinct, share the substance of human experience.

Richard Condrey, Rosalind Condrey, Henry Gautreaux

In 1754, Joseph Blanpain, an accomplished frontier entrepreneur, bought a three-sailed vessel (perhaps a  pirogue à voile) in New Orleans; loaded it with a small warehouse of trading goods; manned it with a party of six; ascended the Mississippi River past his plantation and entered the headwaters of Bayou Plaquemine; descended the Plaquemine to the Gulf of Mexico; entered and crossed the Lagoon of the Atakapa; reentered the Gulf at the western end of the Great Barrier Reef of the Americas; and coasted to the shores of Trinity Bay, where he established a successful trading post among the Native Americans.  He did this with relative ease and confidence as he had made this trip before, knew the Indigenous people, and was consulting with Louisiana’s governor. Though not a voyage of discovery, Blanpain’s account would define Europe’s understanding of the western extent of the Mississippi River’s delta, allow the United States to secure America’s heartland in the early 1800s, and contribute to a scientifically-sound blueprint for restoring our catastrophically eroding coast. Here we review this set of cascading events through authoritative first-hand accounts from the 1500s to the present, with an eye on the fatal flaws in Louisiana’s coastal restoration plan.

William Dees

This is part one of a three-part series exploring “creation stories” from five major religions of the world – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.  The first part introduces the audience to 12 classical religions of the world and focuses on the early known religions – Hinduism and Buddhism.  “Creation stories” from Hinduism, including information from the Vedas and other works, are presented.  Comparable “creation stories” are essentially nonexistent in Buddhism; however, select Buddhist philosophies are reviewed.  Time is allotted for audience discussion. 

William Dees

This is part two of a three-part series exploring “creation stories” from five major religions of the world – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.  Part two recaps the 12 classical religions of the world and introduces the Abrahamic Religions - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.  “Creation stories” from Arabic and Hebrew translations of the Qur’an and the Pentateuch/Torah, respectively, are presented.  Time is allotted for audience discussion. 

William Dees

This is the last of a three-part series exploring “creation stories” from five major religions of the world – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.  Part three recaps some of the “creation stories” of the main religions of the world – Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism; and includes Buddhist philosophy.  Part three also presents current commentary from news and scientific media regarding religion and science as well as views by Bertrand Russell and Charles Darwin.  Time is allotted for audience discussion. 

John Doucet

The Baroque (1600-1750) was an artistic era bounded by robust periods of intellectual history—the Scientific Revolution (1543–1687) and the Age of Enlightenment (1685-1815).  Art and architecture in the Baroque were characterized by ornamental embellishment often inspired by nature, including leaves, flora, and fauna.  Despite this inspiration, the science of biology would not emerge for another century.  However, natural historians were busy organizing aspects of nature, paving the way for Linnaeus and taxonomy.  Organization, codification, and encyclopedism pervaded not only natural history but also music.  This study deeply surveyed the known baroque music repertoire for biological subjects and symbols.  A number of Baroque compositions emulated sounding animals, particularly birds, in appropriately named compositions.  Foods, which are inherently biological, also served as subjects.  The wealth of biological subjects in Baroque music not only indicates contemporary interest but also suggests that such popularization helped biology emerge as a unique intellectual discipline.  

John Doucet

Besides organisms and food, Baroque composers utilized other biological subjects.  Part II of this study surveyed the known baroque music repertoire for health and disease as compositional subjects.  The Baroque Era coincided with the end of the Second (pneumonic) Plague in Europe, and improvements in trade and travel that transmitted new music between European cities also ferried disease.  Benevoli’s “Missa In angustia Pestilentiae” (1656) and Zelenka’s “Immisit Dominus pestilentiam” (1709) are two major compositions that explicitly name plague as subject.  In others, like Monteverdi’s “Gloria à 7 voci,” (1610), the subject is implied by performance history.  In addition to sacred works on plague, composers wrote minor narrative pieces on acute and chronic ailments, including gout, asthma, insanity, nystagmus, and an enigmatic composition by Zelenka called “Hipocondrie.”   The prevalence of ailments and plague as subjects in Baroque music represents the impact of health concerns and disease angst in early modern Europe.   

John Doucet

Concepts and characteristics from the Baroque transcended 17th and 18th century Europe and infused the biological science that emerged from it.  In fact both “Baroque” and the period that followed it, “Rococo,” were named anachronistically for molluscan subjects—“imperfect pearl” and “shell” respectively.  Before de Vries in Die Mutationstheorie (1901–03) gave name to genetic change, “mutation” referred to hexachord transformations in Baroque musical notation.  The negative connotation of “baroque” (“obsolete” or “elaborate”) has infused modern publications on the human genome, neuronal transmission, protein structure, and epigenetic inheritance.  Twentieth century composers, like Britten (“Mutations of Bach”) and Respighi (“The Birds”) use Baroque biological subjects in a neo-Baroque musical style.  Modern classical music producers package Baroque compositions under titles invoking the Plague with only chronological association with the epidemic.   In an ironic reversal (like Bach’s “Crab Cannon”), the Baroque has now become a muse for modern biological discourse.

John Doucet

Despite the long literary relationship between poetry and science, little of what Aristotle recognized as “the language of all higher learning and thought” survives either as functional or even memorable writing.  What we recognized as separate cultures in the 21st century is well bridged by relatively recent examples of poets using scientific diction (Chaucer, Donne, Poe, Hardy, Auden, Wilbur) and, less frequently, scientists writing in poetic forms (Oppenheimer, Maxwell, Huxley), not to mention the casual use of terms like “DNA” and “electrons” in modern poetry.  In revival of the tradition, this presentation is the ninth annual reading of original poetry on scientific topics. The poems are written in formalist structures with concise, epigrammatic narrative emulating the nature of scientific writing. The centerpiece of this reading is a narrative poem based on the cosmological, mathematical, and musical intellect of German scientist Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).