1233rd OGM and public lecture

“Science in literature”

  Dr James Ley

  Editor, Sydney Review of Books

Wednesday 1 July 2015
Union University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney

Literature and science have historically been seen as competing and sometimes opposed disciplines, confined to their own discrete modes of comprehension. James Ley will consider some of the ways in which contemporary literature has sought to embrace and naturalise scientific understanding, while grappling with the moral implications of advances in scientific knowledge. It will argue that the language of literature has the potential to humanise complex scientific views and thus render them comprehensible, and in doing so play a role in disseminating scientific truths.

James Ley is the Editor of the Sydney Review of Books and the author of The Critic in the Modern World: Public Criticism from Samuel Johnson to James Wood (2014). In 2014, he was awarded the Geraldine Pascall Prize for Australian Critic of the Year. According to the judges’ report, “He operates at the point where scholarly precision and essayistic liberty intersect. ... In a Ley review, you may be sure that an independent opinion informed by wide reading and sharp thinking is being stated.” See http://www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/