ESP Biography

In this class we'll discuss the history of the ideas of differential and integral calculus. Why did Newton and Leibniz succeeding in developing it, where the ancient Greeks failed? How can we explain its timeless utility, and what are its limitations as a tool? How did the various modern scientific revolutions change our perspective on calculus? What has calculus meant over the centuries to inventors, artists, philosophers linguists, and the man on the street? We'll see that, while there is something permanent about mathematics, it can nevertheless be transformed radically by the characteristics of the societies and cultures which use it.

Western literature begins with the following lines: "Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians..." [Lattimore translation] In Homer's Iliad, Achilles (Achilleus) is the fiercest fighter on the side of the Greeks (the Achaians) in the Trojan War. In some ways, he is what we think of as a man's man. However, he is also a deeply flawed and vulnerable figure, who is prone to errors of judgment, not least because of his tendency to anger. Homer's poetry predates Plato and the true beginning of Western philosophy, but it is highly concerned with ethical questions. And in ancient Greece (with its deeply entrenched gender inequities) the question of how to live was closely connected to the question of what it means to be a man. In this class we will explore how Homer's men define their masculinity, in terms of honor, physical strength, intelligence, authority, virility, and so on. For point of contrast, we will also listen to excerpts from "gangster rap" albums of the '80s and '90s, which is no less deeply concerned with what it means to be a man (and which also frequently reaches highly questionable conclusions.)

Learn why so many influential thinkers across a wide range of disciplines, and some of the most exciting ideas of the twentieth century, emerged in Paris after the Second World War. In the process, we'll think about the nature of creativity, and how society and culture influence theory and art. This class will be mostly of a historical nature, but the discussion will be free-ranging. No mathematics background is required. The presentation will include several film clips.

This class is all about the possibility of writing software to compose instrumental music, especially for piano. We'll discuss ways to program principles of music theory, and statistical methods for imitating certain composers. We'll listen critically to music composed by computers, and generate a few small pieces ourselves.