Ulisses Barres de Almeida

University of Durham, UK

Abstract

What are these sparks of infinite clarity? And what am I? So I pry.*

I approach the question of human fascination for, and the inspiration of, astronomical phenomena, starting from the concept of elementary experience developed in the work of the Italian thinker Luigi Giussani. I follow Giussani’s ideas in some detail and argue that man’s attraction for the world around him is rooted in the most fundamental experience of wonder before the ‘otherliness’ of reality. In the process of discovery and confrontation with something that is ‘other’, a dynamic is set out in which man’s reason is provoked and inspired to question and to create. To emphasize man’s personal experience of wonder before the skies and its cultural impact, the discussion is guided by extracts from the literature and arts, including Leopardi and Van Gogh.

 

*extract from Leopardi, Night-Song Of A Wandering Shepherd of Asia

Biographical Details

Ulisses Barres de Almeida  is a final year PhD student of Astrophysics at the University of Durham, working as a member of the H.E.S.S. collaboration for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy. Since his undergraduate studies of Physics in Sao Paulo, he has had a great interest on themes of inter-disciplinarity, and particularly the relation between astronomy and the arts and culture. He met Luigi Giussani in the final year of his university studies and since then has had a growing interest in the understanding of man’s personal fascination with reality, which is at the source of scientific interest. In 2007, along with friends, he began an online interdisciplinary postgraduate journal, Kaleidoscope, in association with the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham, to promote interdisciplinary research and dialogue among postgraduate students in Europe. He is a member of Euresis, an Association for the Promotion of Scientific Endeavour.