Events calendar

An overview of events related to, or organised within the framework of the exhibition 'Beyond the Lab: the DIY Science Revolution':

Tuesday March 26

Lecture by dr. Doina-Cristina Rusu (RUG) - Manipulating Spiritual Matter. How Did Early Modern Science Become Experimental?

The event will be in English.
Walk-in from 15.30hrs (which gives time to check out the Beyond the Lab expo); Session starts at 16.00hrs and ends at approx. 17.00hrs.
Entry free after registration.

The emergence of experimental science in the early modern period did not take place in the universities or research institutes, but in individual ateliers and mere households – Do It Yourself Science!

Doina-Cristina Rusu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Philosophy, where she runs a NWO-Veni project on the emergence of experimental science.

She will re-enact some ancient experiments where phenomena at hand were explained by the activity of spiritual matter. This will offer us an insight into the roots of the scientific culture. Moreover, the recreation of early modern experiments will bring knowledge about the relation between theory (in this case the spiritual matter) and experimentation in a period usually called the Scientific Revolution. The experiments will be shown on video (and for the non-dangerous experiments: live) and discussed with the audience.

Universities were focusing on theology, medicine and law, and natural philosophy was taught only in order to expose some theoretical principles. Moreover, institutes and academies were born only in the second half of the seventeenth century. Before that, artisans, practitioners and court philosophers dealt with explaining natural phenomena, producing objects and investigating nature in general. One particular class of phenomena dealt with action at a distance, such as magnetism or gravitation. Some philosophers explained these phenomena, and several others, in terms of invisible pneumatic matter (called spirits) traveling in between bodies. Distillations played a central role in advancing the theory of spirits: spirits were produced in the distillation apparatus, and then they were brought back to a liquid, but much stronger and with different qualities than the initial substance. In this way, spirits became crucial in the birth of modern experimental science and the switch to a corpuscularian matter theory.

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Wednesday March 27

Lecture by Stephen Serjeant - Citizen Science and the Data Avalanche

Did you know people are better at classifying tasks then computers? Can crowdsourcing help us to classify data of the universe?
8 pm, Academiegebouw, €4,- / €2,- with SG-card / free for students

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Sunday 14 April

KLM Urban Trail running event as closing event on the last day of the exhibition 'Beyond the Lab'.

More information: https://www.groningenurbantrail.nl/