Prof. Aronova brought up the idea of citizen seismology, a specific type of citizen sciences in her articles and her lecture. I have always had a sophisticated impression on the citizen sciences. On the one hand, I believe it is an effective way to spread out the idea and enhance the influence of science to the larger public. In fact, many institutions also have similar science promotion programs, such as Colby’s CAPS program. Continue reading
Author: Anna Yu (Page 1 of 3)
This Tuesday night, we had our last session of the Origins lecture theories – a poster presentation of the research projects that my Origins seminar has been working on for the whole semester. We also had students from the creative artist book class to present their works. It was a celebration of the intellectual growths that we gained from past lectures and a showcase of our own work on the theme of Origins.
“Possibilities” has been a constant theme in our previous lecture series as many guests categorized it as a source of the origins of their research objects. This week, Professor Vittorio Loreto from Sapienza University of Rome came to Colby to give a talk on the origins of innovation and novelties, in which he provided new insights on the meaning of possibilities through his study on the “adjacent possible.”
As a student growing up in East Asia, other regions in this continent always seem both mysterious and somehow connected to me. Therefore, it was a great pleasure to have Prof. Arnout van der Meer from the history department to come to our class and talk about the origins and history of national identity in Southeast Asia. Particularly, I found his onion model and his analysis on the relationship between world history and regional history very inspiring, both of which reflect the complexity of the origins of national identity.
Last week, Prof. Janet Browne from the Harvard University came to Colby to attend the seminar and give a lecture on the origins of Darwin’s origins of the species theory. While her talk mainly provided a bibliographical introduction of Darwin and his findings, I found the seminar discussion very inspiring for me to think about the word “origins” from different perspectives.