About the Science Institute

The Science Institute draws on St. John’s College’s long tradition of studying science through the discussion of original texts, emphasizing hands-on involvement and experiments. Each weeklong session is an intensive immersion in landmark topics and texts, with twice-daily seminars centered on discussion among participants.

Rather than viewing science as an edifice of facts, we encounter it through the living questions it poses and, in so doing, reenact the experience of scientific discovery. By encouraging each other to express and engage with those questions, we open ourselves to the wonder of inquiry into the mysteries of nature.

The Science Institute is open to those who want to delve more deeply into the questions raised by science and mathematics.

Mr. Pesic, tutor emeritus and musician-in-residence at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, is the director of the Science Institute.

Seminar programs run concurrently with Summer Classics. Seminars meet twice daily.

Summer 2024 Science Institute Seminars

What Are Numbers?

Joshua Mirth and Peter Pesic
Noon–2 p.m. EDT / 10 a.m.–Noon MDT and 4–6 p.m. EDT / 2–4 p.m. MDT
July 1–5, 2024
ONLINE

We first learn numbers as children, but their mysteries never stop deepening. The modern concept of number owes much to Richard Dedekind’s foundational work, which we study carefully and slowly in his two famous papers on the theory of numbers: “Continuity and Irrational Numbers” and “The Nature and Meaning of Numbers.” Accessible to someone comfortable with high school algebra, Dedekind cuts the Gordian knot of number.

Texts:

• Richard Dedekind, Essays on the Theory of Numbers. Dover, ISBN 978-0486210100
• Euclid passages (manual will be provided)

Experiencing Quanta

Peter Pesic and Ken Wolfe
10 a.m.–Noon MDT and 2–4 p.m. MDT
July 8–12, 2024
IN-PERSON

Quantum mechanics challenges our ordinary experience and intuition even as it underlies the physics that has transformed the world. We spend a week not just discussing Richard Feynman’s inspired description of the fundamental quantum processes but experiencing them for ourselves by doing experiments with a sensitive apparatus capable of registering the behavior of a single quantum of light. With it, we can see as directly as possible what quanta can do, even as we discuss and work through experimental explorations of quantum interference and quantum erasers. This is a unique opportunity to encounter and study quantum phenomena such as the "wave-particle duality" through hands-on experience.

Text:

• Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter . Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0691164090
• Manual will be provided.

On the Motion of the Heart: William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood

This seminar has been cancelled.
 

William Braithwaite and Lijun Gu
10 a.m.–Noon MDT and 2–4 p.m. MDT
July 15–19, 2024
IN-PERSON

For 2000 years Western medicine followed the opinions of Aristotle (4^th century B.C.E.) and Galen (2^nd century C.E.) that dark-red venous blood and bright-red arterial blood moved separately and served different functions. In De Motu Cordis (1629) the English physician William Harvey proved conclusively that the heart pumps all blood in one continuous circulation throughout the body. A careful reading of this text guides us in retracing the steps up to and through Harvey’s Copernican revolution in biology; some have ranked it first among the top ten medical discoveries of all time. Supplemental readings, participant presentations, and doing some of his experiments help us bring to life this epochal event in the history of science, which opened the way to modern cardiology (including the stethoscope, blood-pressure cuff, stents, by-pass surgery, and heart transplants).

Text: William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (tr. Robert Willis). Resource Publications, ISBN 978-1498235082

Transglobal Gastronomy: Savoring the Art and Science of the “Ubiquitous Tomato”

David Carl and Paola Villa
9:30 a.m.–Noon MDT and 2–3:30 p.m. MDT
July 22–26, 2024
IN-PERSON

“O ye caterers of luxuries, ye gods and goddesses of the science of cookery! Deliver us from tomatoes.” Such was the plea of the editor of The Boston Courier in 1834. Half a century later, in 1889, tomato sauce was thought fit to feed a queen, and pizza Margherita was born in Naples. Fruits or vegetables, “strange and horrible things,” or “golden pomes” (as the Italians called them), tomatoes are the perfect oxymoronic travel guide for the complex and still poorly understood world of taste. Spanning the New and the Old Worlds, we explore the science and the art of transforming nature into culture while following the metamorphoses of the tomato in Mexican, Italian, and Indian culture and cuisine. In the laboratory of the kitchen, and with the help of chemistry and neurogastronomy, we challenge our senses to understand the flavor molecules that allowed this Cinderella of the culinary realm to blossom into the king of all ingredients.

Texts:

• Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. University of Toronto Press, ISBN 978-0802086570
• Charles Spence, Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating. Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0735223479

About Peter Pesic

Peter Pesic is a writer, pianist, and educator. He is director of the Science Institute at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he is Musician-in-Residence and Tutor Emeritus. His writings include five books about the history of science, music, and ideas, six editions, and sixty papers. As a pianist, he has been heard in many places in the United States and in Europe.

He is the author of the following books, all published by the MIT Press:

• Sounding Bodies: Music and the Making of Biomedical Science
• Polyphonic Minds: Music of the Hemispheres
• Music and the Making of Modern Science
• Sky in a Bottle
• Abel’s Proof: An Essay on the Sources and Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability
• Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature
• Labyrinth: A Search for the Hidden Meaning of Science

Peter Pesic’s books are available at the SJC Bookstore.