Recording of a lecture delivered on May 5, 1972, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 15, 2023, by Daniel Carranze as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

The lecture conducts a close reading of Goethe's poem on the "Metamorphosis of Plants" by situating it within Goethe's larger scientific endeavor to understand what it means for a being to be a specifically living being, in particular what the kind of wholeness exhibited by the organism, whether plant, animal, or human, looks like. Particular attention will be paid to the philosophical resources upon which Goethe draws in his scientific investigation of nature, in particular Aristotle's four causes, the fourth, formal one of which is decisive for Goethe's morphology or study of living forms, and Spinoza's conatus, which Goethe understood as the organism's own endeavor to persevere in and more fully realize its own being.

Professor Carranza is an assistant professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures at Harvard University.

Recording of a lecture delivered on January 30, 2004, by Ralph Lerner as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 1, 2023, by Paul Vasile as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Mr. Vasile describes his lecture: "We'll explore practices of musicking rooted in the oral tradition and the ways they enrich and complexify how we interpret music from the page." 

Paul Vasile is a church musician, teacher, and composer who finds his greatest joy in collaborative and community-centered work. 

Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 4, 2003, by Elliott Zuckerman as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

William Harvey and René Descartes famously disagreed in their accounts of what the heart is doing as it gives its characteristic beat. Both authors recognize that the heart alternates between squeezing and opening up. Harvey posits that the beat occurs as the heart squeezes closed while Descartes believes the beat happens as the heart opens up. Both have access to similar observations. How is it that they come to opposite conclusions? I’ll discuss how their differing views of how to think about living things likely play a role in this disagreement. I'll examine what we have learned since their time about how the heart beats. Finally, given what we’ve learned, I'll ask the question: What can we say about the nature of living things?"
Ms. Paalman's lecture is the first formal lecture of the academic year. Previously referred to as the Dean's Lecture, this lecture is now called the Christopher B. Nelson Lecture.