Fall 1996 Meetings

Ohio University Chapter

Sigma Xi


November 6

12:00 Noon

203 Baker Center

Brown bag your lunch, go through the line, or just sit back and enjoy...


Fun Stuff with Fossil Plants:
Pontifications on the Evolution of the Terrestrial Flora


Gar W. Rothwell
Department of Environmental and Plant Biology


Abstract

Paleontology provides an exquisite window for viewing the changing earth through hundreds of millions of years. Major events in the colonization of land, in the mode and tempo of evolution, and in changing environments are all recorded by fossil remains. Examples from the tropical forests of Ohio and Alberta, Canada will be used to illustrate a few of these events.


November 8

4:00 P.M.

Porter Hall, Room 103


Science meets Art:

Geological Investigations in the Royal Library, Windsor


Professor Andrew C. Scott

Geology Department, Royal Holloway, University of London, England.


This lecture is jointly sponsored by:

  • Department of Geological Sciences
  • Institute of Applied and Professional Ethics
  • Environmental Studies
  • Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society


Abstract

In the early Seventeenth Century the Accademia dei Lincei (amongst whose members was Galileo Galilei) under Prince Federico Cesi, Duke of Acquasparta, amassed a large body of data on a variety of natural history objects and phenomena. The major method for recording data on the objects collected and studied was to produce high quality illustrations. Many of the drawings were purchased by King George III in 1763 and most are now housed in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Amongst the drawings are more than 200 of fossil plants, woods in particular, some of which were used in the first known illustrated treatise on fossil plants published by Francesco Stelluti in 1637. New examination of these drawings together Stelluti's publication, early manuscript copies of this work and accompanying letters, together with new field investigations have thrown light on the seventeenth-century debate on the formation of these fossil woods and reveal conflicts of interpretation possibly fuelled by unethical pressure, both religious and financial, from the Vatican. Many new scientific investigative methods were pioneered by the Accademia but they also faced many of the ethical dilemmas faced by scientists today and some of these will be discussed.

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Dick Piccard revised this file (http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/~sigmaxi/fall96.html) on November 1, 1996.

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