Physics Program Presents
Music and the Making of Modern Science
Friday, April 10, 2015
Hegeman 107
Peter Pesic
St. John's College
St. John's College
Music has prepared and influenced developments in natural philosophy beginning with the Pythagoreans, who grouped arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy as sister sciences. This "four-fold way" (quadrivium) was for millenia the basis of higher education and deeply shaped the "new science." I will discuss three seminal figures whose scientific work, in different ways, was significantly affected by music. Johannes Kepler used new astronomical observations to find the song of the Earth; Isaac Newton tried to impose the musical octave on the spectrum; Max Planck spent a formative year experimenting with harmoniums and choruses before turning to the problem of black body radiation.
For more information, call 845-758-7302, or e-mail [email protected].
Location: Hegeman 107