Course Description

Instructor: Liza Davis

In his book Consilience, the famous entomologist and writer Edward O. Wilson argues that “The greatest enterprise of the mind has been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and the humanities,” or what he terms “consilience.” Wilson defines this term as a “jumping together” of knowledge across the two cultures of science and humanities with the aim of finding common ground. In this OLLI course, we shall explore this notion by examining literary works that draw on scientific understanding and scientific works that have the artistic merit of good literature. Our readings will include excerpts from Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and her contemporary Erasmus Darwin’s “Temple of Nature”; from Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World and New Yorker contributor Andrea DenHoed’s essay on the American eugenics movement; and from Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind. We’ll dip as well into works by writers such as Loren Eiseley and Andrea Barrett.