Stephen Greenblatt: The Swerve - How the World Became Modern

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Stephen Greenblatt, Author, The Swerve; Professor of English and American Literature, Harvard University

Monday Night Philosophy hosts Harvard scholar and prolific author Greenblatt, who has crafted a stunning historical account and a thrilling story of discovery. Nearly 600 years ago, a cannily alert man took a thousand-year-old manuscript off a library shelf and soon realized it was the last surviving manuscript of Lucretius's epic, On the Nature of Things. This rediscovery unearthed ancient but dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of tiny atoms in eternal motion. Those ideas helped inspire the Renaissance and later influenced the scientific thought of Galileo, Freud, Darwin and Einstein, and the writing of Montaigne, Shakespeare and Thomas Jefferson.

MLF:  Humanities
Location:
SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program
Cost:
$20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)
Program Organizer: George Hammond