The Cosmos in a Cabinet: Performance,Politics, and Mechanical Philosophy in Henry Bridges’ ‘Microcosm’

How did ordinary people – artisans, laborers, servants, and children – come to know the Newtonian universe? And what effects did this knowledge have on how they contextualized their place in society? When it appeared in 1733, Henry Bridges’ “Modern Microcosm” promised to give paying customers a view of the entire universe ingeniously recreated in a ten-foot-tall automaton theater. A hit with audiences, this clockwork wonder was displayed in Britain and the American colonies until disappearing mysteriously in the 1770s. This paper attempts to recover non-elite understandings of public science by examining the career of an astronomical wonder in the rowdy marketplace of ideas that was the London show scene.     

Learning music from collaboration

I draw on two traditions of research: the social psychology of collaborative groups, and the ethnographic study of improvisational performance. I outline a general model of group creativity derived from these traditions. I show how the model can be used to better understand musical competence and performance, and I provide recommendations for how music education can take better advantage of collaboration.