This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare provider before making health decisions based on this content. Centre For Medical Humanities may contain affiliate links — purchases through these links support our editorial work at no extra cost to you.
By CentreForMedicalHumanities.org Research Team | Last verified: September 2026
Durham’s Institute for Advanced Study & Centre for Medical Humanities present a symposium
Exploring Beauty and Wonder
Thursday 14 June 2012
9.30 – 4.30pm, Durham Light Infantry Museum
Download the Exploring Beauty and Wonder Symposium Programme.
It is increasingly recognised that beauty is an idea that needs, and deserves, recovery and rehabilitation: the same seems true of the idea of wonder. In attempting it, many questions arise. Must the appreciation of beauty or a sense of wonder compete for the same intellectual space as analytic understanding? Can beauty and wonder extend our grasp of, and response to, the world around us? Can they provoke and inform the rational search for explanation? Might we justifiably regard beauty and wonder as transfiguring the world, and as transfiguring ourselves – our experience and our self-experience – as we encounter and reflect upon the world?
Through contributions from the disciplines of mathematics, music, theology, cultural studies and philosophy, this Symposium will explore the parallels (and their limitations) between wonder and beauty, the phenomenology of experiencing them, how they transfigure our world, whether they point beyond the world of experience and reason, and how they support (perhaps, vitally) human flourishing.
Contributors include: John Bissell (Mathematics), Stephen Pattison (Theology, Univ. of Birmingham), Mark McIntosh (Theology), Nicholas Saul (Modern Languages and Culture), Martyn Evans (Philosophy and School of Medicine). Chair: Sander Gilman (Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Sciences, Emory University). Download the Exploring Beauty and Wonder Symposium Programme.
This one-day Symposium is free (lunch and refreshments available at no charge), but places are limited. For further information, and to book a place, please contact [email protected] or download the Beauty and Wonder Symposium Flyer. The symposium is the final event in The Recovery of Beauty series and takes place amidst the About Face exhibition.