Colours and materials

Semester: Autumn 2014
Schedule: Friday 13:15-15:00
Classroom: 
Number of hours: 28
An optional hour at the end of the course is provided for students who need clarification and additional information.
Type of teaching: Lectures and integrated practical work

Objective

This course provides an opportunity for dialogue between the arts and humanities, the humanities and social sciences and the natural sciences on the subject of visual sensation, light and colour. Its aim is to better define the place of science in subjects that are of such profound interest to human beings.

Content

Here are some of the themes for reflection that may be proposed to the students:

• The colours of the artisan, the scholar and the artist
• The Goethe-Newton controversy over the nature of colour
• Can colour be measured, or rather can it be learned individually
• Can science legitimately take an interest in a subject such as the harmony of colours?
• An anthropology of colour
• Natural and artificial lighting as an example of a debate on energy
• The visual system as seen by biologists and physiologists

Mode of evaluation

An essay on a theme linking scientific and human approaches. An essay proposed in the middle of the semester will contribute to the final mark.

Responsible: Libero Zuppiroli, Professor émérite à l39;EPFL
Speaker: Jacob Lachat, assistant professor at Unil

Semester: Spring 2015
Schedule: Friday 1.15pm-3pm
Classroom: 
Number of hours: 28
An optional hour at the end of the course is provided for students who need clarification and additional information.
Type of teaching: Lectures and integrated practical work

Objective

The sciences of matter are difficult to separate from the many human contributions that have gone into building them. Matter is both experienced and fantasised by the scientist, whose investigations lie at the crossroads between the work of the hand and the imagination of the world of atoms and particles. The aim of this interactive course is to identify the sources of the creativity that fuels these sciences. It is aimed at students of the humanities and natural sciences (SSP, arts, biology, etc.), as well as anyone seeking to understand the universe of matter in relation to mankind.

Content

Here are some of the themes for reflection that will be proposed to the students:

• Man and matter at the dawn of humankind
• Argiles and ceramics: from myth to technology
• Isaac Newton's alchemy, an ideology of matter
• The relationship between the psychoanalyst C.-G. Jung and the scientific rêveur Wolfgang Pauli
• The phantasmagorical matter: the reductionist dictum and the creative power of the chaos of atoms
• Chemical creativity, plastics and the environment
• Nanoscience and nanotechnology: from reality to science fiction
• The irruption of the virtual: FabLabs & Makers, a new idea of matter

Mode of valuation

An essay on a theme linking scientific and human approaches. An essay proposed in the middle of the semester will contribute to the final mark.

The courses are independent of each other.
The autumn course can be taken without the spring course, and the spring course without the autumn course.