Schedule
Wednesday
5:00-6:00 pm
Opening reception
6:00-7:00 pm
Keynote, Claudia Rankine
Ballroom A
Thursday
9:00-10:00 am
Keynote Panel
Henriksen Conference Room
Moderators: Katharine Coles, Fred Adler
Concurrent Panel 1: What Beauty Knows
10:15 - 11:15 am, Henricksen Conference Room
Moderator: Fred Adler (Mathematics and School of Biological Sciences)
Panelists:
Maureen O’Hara Ure (Art and Art History)
Chris Johnson (Computer Science)
Erik Jorgensen (Biological Sciences)
What is the role of beauty in creating knowledge, whether by reducing abstract concepts into perceptible images or permitting leaps of the imagination otherwise impossible through pure evidence? How do science and art rely on the knowledge that beauty permits or even creates?
Concurrent Panel 2: Beauty & Ethics
10:15 - 11:15 am, Dumke Reception Room
Moderator: Nathan Wainstein (English)
Respondent: Jessica Straley (English)
Panelists:
Matt Potolsky (English)
David Carrier (Biological Sciences)
Rachel Mason Dentinger (History)
Joyce C. Havstad (Philosophy)
Oscar Wilde stated that “Aesthetics are to Ethics what sexual is to natural selection. Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Aesthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, variety and change.” Our panelists will take off from this quotation to ask what beauty and virtue really share.
Concurrent Panel 3: Beauty & Form (Graduate student panel)
11:15 - 12:15 pm, Dumke Reception Room
Moderator: Erin O’Luanaigh (English)
Panelists:
Jasmine Khaliq (English)
Vitasta Singh (English)
Jack Cook (Mathematics)
Annapurna Post-Leon (Biological Sciences)
In Genesis, "the earth was without form", and God first brought light and then form to the earth by dividing light from darkness and water from land, thus creating the space for beauty. What is the relation between form and beauty? Is too much form boring just as too little results in mere chaos? How do poets, mathematicians and scientists create or observe form to engage with beauty?
Concurrent Panel 4: Can an idea be beautiful?
11:15 - 12:15 pm, Henricksen Conference Room
Moderator: Fred Adler (Mathematics and School of Biological Sciences)
Panelists:
Anil Seth (Physics & Astronomny)
Peter Trapa (Mathematics and College of Science)
Hasse Borup (School of Music)
We tend to think of beauty as inhering in the world of the senses: the shape of a face, the taste of a peach, the sound of a bird. But it is equally clear that beauty lives in the mind as inspired by that object. Can ideas, whether from the sciences or humanities, act as objects that may free our minds for the experience of beauty?
1:30 - 4:30 pm
Recommended Activity: Mingwei Lee’s Sonic Blossom
Half-price admission with registration badge
Utah Museum of Fine Arts
6:00-7:00 pm
Keynote, Brian Greene
Ballroom A
Friday
10:00-11:00 am
Keynote, Bevil Conway
Ballroom A
11:00-12:00 pm
Closing Roundtable Discussion with Keynotes
Ballroom A
Moderator: Katharine Coles