[Gloria Lee McMillan]

Hello,

A group of us have been thinking and rethinking a documentary film project that would show the value of crossing the line between science and the arts.

At first we were going to make it a conversation between Galileo and Shakespeare–roughly contemporaries.
But granting agencies didn’t like the fictional parts.

So then we opened up to making the documentaries more a chronicle of the two men’s adventures in writing. We looked at Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems as a dramatic text and Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Digges Perspective Glass, a British proto-telescope.
These were not thrilling to the granting agencies.

I have been stuck what is not working but it occurred to be that, instead of stretching only weak evidences of boundary crossing, especially in Shakespeare, we could do a film about the uproar over all the astronomical claims that upset Shakespearean scholars so (over-interpreting scant textual data and all that). Maybe this would be entertaining for audiences to watch tempests in a teapot and also could be very enlightening about the nature of what counts as evidence for science as opposed to what counts in the humanities.

My goal is to assist the project of bringing science and the arts into closer contact and heal some very old rifts.

Do any of you on this list want to share your thoughts? Do you think this is a promising premise for a documentary?

Other comments?

Thanks,
Gloria

[Lisa Ann Robertson]

Hi Gloria,

Just out of curiosity, why Galileo and Shakespeare? There are so many examples of poets and men of science who really did cross the line between arts and sciences. Why not some of them?

Cheers,

Lisa Ann

[Gloria Lee McMillan]

Hi, Lisa,

We chose the two contemporaries because of new information we had from Ewen Whitaker, a British astronomer who has made a working Digges Perspective Glass. After researching that Will and his men stayed at the Digges family home in Stratford, where he almost certainly saw the copy of astronomer Tycho Brahe’s Epistolae (with the name Rosencranz and Guildenstern on its cover page–Tycho’s ancestors), we were sure Will knew of the Perspective glass even if he never viewed stars through it.
Thomas Digges was the translator of Copernicus and the main popularizer of the Copernican system in Elizabethan England. How close the family was to Will is well-dcumented. Otherocnnections abound including the poem about Will by Leonard Digges that is one of the main ways to prove that Shkespeare’s works were written by Will.

Nevertheless, all this delightful data is a bit on the speculative side (although I am convinced, of course) to prove that Shakespeare knew something about optics and the Copernican system per se.
The dramatic meeting was fun to imagine, therefore. Galileo being huffy about his better design for his ‘scope and all that.

So what do you think of the new direction?

Gloria

[Jenna Mead]

Hello Gloria and Lisa,

This sounds fascinating. I’m an out-of-towner on this one but the connections are intriguing, especially given their speculative nature. I work on Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe and so have a (deeply) vested interest in crossing the borders between Arts and Sciences. I’ll be watching this space with a lot of interest.

Keep going! Eventually, the granting agencies will get their acts together 🙂

Cheers,

Jenna

[Nancy Schrock]

A project that crosses the arts and the sciences sounds like an interesting one if there is a focus relevant to current issues. I have to bridge the two daily. I have a Ph.D. in chemistry and an M.A. in creative writing and teach both chemistry and writing classes. I find the cultural differences between workers in the sciences and humanities interesting. I just returned from a week long poetry workshop where I realized how differently the two groups treat mystery–or what we don’t know. The poets embraced and explored mystery, not feeling a need to explain everything or eliminate it. Scientists have to explain the unknown in their own terms. Today, funding is favoring the sciences because of the link between the type of answers and our capitalist system. A project that bridges art and science might consider these cultural differences and how we as a society are choosing to deselect some types of work. Galileo and Shakespeare and the issues of their day with respect to funding and censorship would make an interesting contrast to a poet and a scientist in today’s world. I explore some of the values of both the humanities and the sciences in a book chapter I wrote for Danielle DeVoss (MSU) in a soon-to-be-published book entitled Cultures of Copyright.

[Lisa Ann Robertson]

Hi Gloria,

Yes, that does make more sense.  The period is earlier than mine–I work in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a  focus on Romantic poets and “scientists.” Certainly, the moment has come for consilience.  I think a film that shows how the past couple hundred  years are relatively unique in our aggressive separation of the sciences and the arts sounds fascinating and timely.

Best of luck,

Lisa Ann

[Lila Marz Harper]

For a film, you need a narrative arc. This can be a challenge when dramatizing science history and that is something to keep in mind.

I work in 18th and 19th century women’s natural history travel narratives. Some of these accounts may be potentially filmable and I was recently approached by one producer recently for a Biopic. But I would have to play a bit fast and loose with the biographical accuracy to write a 90 min. teleplay.

Good luck,

Lila Marz Harper

[Gloria Lee McMillan]

Thanks, Lila. I will keep that in mind. I am stepping back from the F2F meeting of Galileo and Will Shakespeare to focus on why Shakespeareans get apoplexy over the attempts of astronomers who attempt to read Hamlet (Peter Usher), for example as containing clues to Shakespeare’s knowledge of “the new philosophy” of Copernicus’ heliocentric solar system. (If we have the resources, we can also stage Will staying at the Digges house and finding the proto-telescope there…or plane for it and discussing it with Digges.)

So maybe the drama will be video bites of angry Shakespearean scholars and some video of agitated astronomers.

What do you think?

This leads to discussing what counts as EVIDENCE and how thinking differs between the two fields.

We’ll segue into a couple projects that straddle both field successfully.

Cheers,
Gloria

For a film, you need a narrative arc. This can be a challenge when dramatizing science history and that is something to keep in mind.

I work in 18th and 19th century women’s natural history travel narratives. Some of these accounts may be potentially filmable and I was recently approached by one producer recently for a Biopic. But I would have to play a bit fast and loose with the biographical accuracy to write a 90 min. teleplay.

Good luck,

Lila Marz Harper

[Lila Marz Harper]

Yes, as I understand it, tension needs to build up to the climax, which may be a confrontation. This will provide the framework for a discussion of evidence. It sounds as if you need a good opener to set the theme–maybe a staged modern argument between scholars?

You might want to study the script of a BBC documentary, maybe on Darwin, for example, for ideas. Television requires something dramatic to happen about every 15 minutes. Someone who has taught screenwriting might be a good source. I just went to a screen writing for idiots guide for help, but screen writing is a very different type of writing than what I have done before.

Cheers,

Lila

[Nancy Schrock]

An April issue of New Scientist had an article on Shakespeare and his understanding of astronomy. It mentioned many of the points  you make. Just an FYI.

http://www.newscientist.com/special/shakespeare

 

[Gloria Lee McMillan]

An April issue of New Scientist had an article on Shakespeare and his understanding of astronomy. It mentioned many of the points you make. Just an FYI.

http://www.newscientist.com/special/shakespeare

Yes, Nancy, my husband brought that article to my attention and that is the article that made me think it may be more useful to pose the issue of types of evidence at the core of our documentary since the granting agencies are extremely wary of the evidence about Will Shakespeare’s having any interest in the “new Philosophy” of Copernicus.

We can show some Shakespearean scholarly outrage–I have certainly encountered it–and that can be dramatic. as I said, if budget permits, we could stage Will and his men staying at the house of his friends the Digges family.

[Gloria Lee McMillan]

I thought some of you who have posted might like to see the power point I have been using to speak to groups about our film project. This is the older version, centered upon Galileo and Shakespeare but i think you will find it fun to view. I am thinking of adding chapter two–the plot thickens with the Shakespearean scholars vs. astronomers who read Shakespeare.

[Gloria Lee McMillan]

http://users.dakotacom.net/~glomc/NEH/HeavenTalkPT1.pptx

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