Historians of science Lorraine Daston (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin/University of Chicago) and Theodore Porter (University of California at Los Angeles/Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin)
will be exploring the impact of science on the literary imagination with readings from Mark Twain, George Elliott, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, Michael Frayn, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and other writers captivated by the world-changing potential of science and technology.
Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Her work addresses how standards of rationality develop historically through concrete scientific practices such as observation, image-making, and archiving. Recent publications include (co-edited with Elizabeth Lunbeck), Histories of Scientific Observation (2011) and (with Paul Erikson et al), How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (2013). She is currently working on a book about the history of rules.
Theodore Porter is a historian of science at the University of California, Los Angeles and, this year, a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. His books include Trust in Numbers and Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age. With Lorraine Daston he is among the coauthors of The Empire of Chance, or, in German translation, Das Reich des Zufalls. He is finishing a book about how insane asylums became important sites of data and research on human heredity.
Established in 2010, The Berlin Sofa is a series where Berlin-based celebrities from English-language countries read from the works of their favorite authors.
Cal is an American writer who drinks more than he writes. Layla is a beautiful young English woman interested in literature. One can be too careful in life, or one can be too wild. Where is the line? In this small fishing village near the Spanish / French border, where once lived Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Picasso, and other greats, a new generation of artists and writers continue in those decadent footsteps. As one character puts it, “No Lost Generation here, darling. This is Cadaqués. We are finding ourselves!”
Kiran Desai won the 2006 Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss (dt. Erbin des verlorenen Landes). She is the daughter of Indian writer Anita Desai, grew up in India and England and has lived in the US since 1977.
Ben Marcus is the author of three novels, The Age of Wire and String (1995), Notable American Women (2002) and The Flame Alphabet (2012, dt. Flammenalphabet). His stories, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications.
Her new highly acclaimed album saw her collaborate with New Zealand household names and UK producer Dan Goudie (Florence and the Machine, Katie Tunstall). This year also saw Mara feature on ex-Genesis band member Ray Wilson’s solo album Chasing Rainbows.