Trees, Branches, Patterns: Arboreal Physics, Material Poetics
Bomen in de omgeving van Subiaco by Joseph August Knip. Original from The Rijksmuseum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
In this Library Chat, Patricia Dailey, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, discusses with Vincent Fleury, Biophysicist and writer, their shared interest in trees. Fleury, known for his book Arbre de Pierres, discusses the branching patterns observed in trees throughout history. By the late 20th century, these patterns were recognized as universal, leading to the idea of developing a common scientific language to study them. The conversation explores the commonalities between trees, the vegetal, and the human, as well as the role of creativity and indeterminacy in the sciences.
Patricia Dailey is an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her work spans medieval literature, contemporary philosophy, gender studies, psychedelic studies, and eco-criticism. She is the author of Promised Bodies: Time, Language, and Corporeality in Medieval Women’s Mystical Texts (Columbia UP 2013), which sought to reconsider the critical language associated with embodiment by recasting it in the context of a poetics. Along with Veerle Fraeters, she is co-editing a Brill Companion to Hadewijch, forthcoming. She is currently pursuing several projects: while visiting Reid Hall she will be pursuing work on trees and branching, finishing a book on the arboreal sublime; she is also writing an experimental autobiography of parentheses, or, what could be called life, in parentheses. She is the founder of the Colloquium for Early Medieval Studies, co-founder of the Affect Studies University Seminar, and Co-Chair of the Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies Council. She has taught in France at the Université de Lille 3, and the Collège International de Philosophie.
Vincent Fleury is a Biophysicist and writer. He is a director of research at the CNRS in section 5, devoted to condensed matter. He completed a PhD at the École Polytechnique in pattern formation in electrochemical growth and then began to focus on biological systems, studying the development of blood vessels and the lungs.
Vincent Fleury is the author of five popular science books: Arbres de pierre; Des pieds et des mains; De l’oeuf a l’eternite; La chose humaine; Les Tourbillons de la vie.
