Polymathic Pizza

Kate Flint, Provost Professor of Art History and English, will open her conversation on the polymathic approach as an inherent necessity in any field in the Humanities.  Professor Flint will discuss with students the interdisciplinary method she applies in her current work on the visuality of flash photography, where she explores the language, the associations, and the poetics of sudden, startling, flashes of light to illuminate and understand the human experience.

Why get up in the morning anyway?  USC Professor Florence Clark has some answers.  Professor Clark helped pioneer the field of occupational science – how and why, although deceptively simple, everyday activities are actually extraordinarily complex, giving life purpose and meaning, impacting health, and making life worth living to all of us.  For this reason, human beings need to carefully think about how they structure personal and public time.  Dr. Clark has also been key in advancing the related profession of occupational therapy.

Stem cells are the protean building blocks of biological life, triggered into multiple formats by genetic chemistry.  Hence they offer breathtaking possibilities for regenerative medicine.  How far along are we in understanding these design mechanisms?

USC sits atop earthquake country—one stop on the Ring of Fire encircling the Pacific.  No wonder USC is the headquarters of enquiry across dozens of disciplines into the whys, wherefores, and—most important of all—the predictability of a whole lot of shakin’ going on.

We are not alone on this planet.  Bugs are everywhere, butterflies and viruses alike.  What are bugs trying to teach us regarding mutation and survival?  Will we ever win the battle against deadly viruses? Or will bugs prove our undoing?

How does the cosmos—whether one or multiple—hold itself together?  Here’s one theory, strings, the unifying of the universe via a sub-atomic grid that some scientists see as the binding force of the cosmos.   A USC physicist will continue his conversation with students how this might be happening and the multiple disciplines involved in establishing the process in the second of his two-part series.

While genes determine whether a fertilized egg will become a mouse or a man, there is a level of biological randomness that causes identical twins to differ even before birth. This levels of randomness helps understand the limited success of the human genome projects in finding gene differences that underlie most variation in cancer, heart disease, and longevity.

How does the cosmos—whether one or multiple—hold itself together?  Here’s one theory, strings, the unifying of the universe via a sub-atomic grid that some scientists see as the binding force of the cosmos.   A USC physicist will suggest how this might be happening and the multiple disciplines involved in establishing the process.

Presidential professor and Isaias Hellman professor of polymathy Sidney Harman and Alexander Marr, professor of art history, wind up the spring 2011 Polymathic Pizza Undergraduate Series with a discussion of the process through which great polymaths got their acts together.

Physics professor Clifford Johnson discusses how and why polymathic playfulness is crucial to theoretical physics.