The Art of Innovation

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The Art of Innovation: The Scientific Sublime

The Scientific Sublime

BBC Radio 4 - The Art of Innovation, The Scientific Sublime

Sir Ian Blatchford and Dr Tilly Blyth explore how art and science have inspired each other

Ian Blatchford and Tilly Blyth begin their series exploring how art and science have inspired each other with Joseph Wright of Derby's A Philosopher Giving A Lecture On The Orrery.

Sir Ian Blatchford, Director of the Science Museum Group, and the Science Museum’s Head of Collections, Dr Tilly Blyth, begin their series exploring how art and science have inspired each other with Joseph Wright’s painting A Philosopher Giving A Lecture On The Orrery from 1766 and now in the permanent collection at Derby Museum. Wright’s work celebrates the relationship between astronomical science and a religious understanding of the cosmos.

It’s a fitting choice to begin this 20-part series that reveals how the ingenuity of science and technology has been incorporated into artistic expression – and how creative practice, in turn, stimulated innovation and technological change. As Ian Blatchford says; “In Wright of Derby’s painting, science makes a dramatic entry on stage. It’s a new character in the human drama. A modern scientific age is announced with all its novelty, excitement, disruption and above all, the ambiguity of its potential”.

Tilly Blyth reveals that it’s likely that Wright first encountered an orrery when Scottish astronomer James Fergusson visited Derby on a lecture tour in 1762. The orrery was designed to explain God’s creation, not replace it. Fergusson’s mechanical device is one of many types produced to demonstrate the workings of Newton’s universe. It’s a jewel within the Science Museum Group Collection and shows how key ideas about the rationality of the heavens spread far beyond those who first developed them. 


Producer Adrian Washbourne

Produced in partnership with The Science Museum Group

Photograph: Christophel Fine Art/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

How art and science have inspired each other.

Sir Ian Blatchford and Dr Tilly Blyth explore how art and science have inspired each other.

In this landmark series, art historian and Director of the Science Museum Ian Blatchford and technology historian and Head of Collections of the Science Museum Tilly Blyth explore the art of invention and the invention of art and reveal the symbiotic relationship between the two. Many feel science takes the magic out of creativity. These programmes show how scientific advance facilitates creativity. And further, how artistic and scientific endeavour are inspired by the same desires and, often, are the result of intimate conversations between good friends. Galileo's painter friend Ludovicio Cigoli paints a maculate moon on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel and what does Galileo see when he looks through his telescope? A maculate moon. The poet Samuel Coleridge and the chemist Humphrey Davy were very close friends. Scientific innovators are creative thinkers. And the creation of art is dependent on technological development, as well as an aesthetic sense. Throughout history, artists and scientists have both desired to make sense of the world around them and change it, 

Produced in partnership with The Science Museum Group. 

Image credit: Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.

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