Order and Chaos: Making and Breaking Rules in the Arts and Science

Note: This 8-credit program will meet from 6 to 9:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on five Saturdays.

"There must be chaos in one's heart to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
--F. Nietzsche

Great developments in science and the arts-in fact all creative work-often occur at a tense juncture between the poles of order and chaos. This program will investigate how artists and scientists have creatively tried to make sense of their world and the major innovations that have occurred in the process.

In the Arts: By examining Greek and Elizabethan tragedy/comedy, opera, non-western theatre forms, and other great traditions in music, dance, film and visual art, we will explore how highly ordered classical forms (and conventions) emerged and how they have evolved through adaptation, subversion, and technology into new forms.

In Science: By examining the development of classical Greek astronomy through the Copernican Revolution, we will learn how the scientific method includes initially disordered data, highly ordered theories based on that data, new observations that supercede the original data, a collapse of order, and repeat of the process.

Fall will concentrate on the period up to Shakespeare and Copernicus. Winter will continue through the 19th century with focus on Newton, Darwin, Wagner, Chekhov and the advent of the moving image. Spring will cover developments to the present including modern physics, Brecht, and other developments in contemporary art.