22nd January 2010 - Chris Sibson
Sadly, the Society's founding Secretary, Chris Sibson, has died after a long illness.
Obituary
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16th January 2010 - A Samuel Pepys Evening
Members of the OUSL enjoyed one of the most entertaining
evenings of the society's brief history in the shape of the c17 musical and
literary medley on the life and times of Samuel Pepys. This
offering, devised in Scotland by early music expert James Ross, was adapted for us by Chris Coggill
and the late Chris Sibson, and the evening was hosted by Edward and Philippa Seymour.
The programme comprised readings from the famous diary that refer to Pepys's
delight in music and dance, interspersed with contemporaneous music. Pepys
writes with such spontaneous pleasure and natural innocence that one could
forgive him much. There seems little that might need forgiveness, other than
on the part of his wife.
He found time, despite his hedonistic life, to
discharge, as an exceptionally uncorrupted and competent secretary of the
Navy, the duties of a key officer of state under King Charles II, and to
serve, in due course, as President of the Royal Society.
Who cannot love Samuel Pepys, who hears extracts from his diaries, read in such a rich tone
and with fine phrasing as were employed by Dick Holdsworth? Pepys's values
are epitomised in this famous quote, from a diary entry of March 1665:
“Music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.”
His resilient humour appears in his observation that it is “strange to see
how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.” He was often up late
at night, enjoying improvised parties of dance and song. Then, after the
fun, he would sit down by a candle at his desk and compose his diary. Many
entries end with the brief phrase, “and so to bed”.
The programme included songs of the period, divinely sung by Barbara Hall
and Chris Vigar. Among them was the work of Pepys's own proud hand, “Beauty,
Retire” and extracts from the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes.
The music was played brilliantly on instruments of the Restoration period by the versatile ensemble of Eva Berg, Chris Birch, Chris Coggill, Edward Seymour, Karlheinz Backes and Mick Swithinbank.
We could imagine the audience transported, at any hour of the day or night,
to the rooms of Pepys and friends, to take part in a lively song or
instrumental recital, to dance a stately Coranto or a gayer, faster Jigg or
to indulge in a fleeting amorous exchange.
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November
and December 2009 - The
Oxford stand at the “Foire de
l’Étudiant” and
interview help for entrance
candidates
As in previous years the Society
ran the Oxford stand at the
annual Student Fair on 12th and 13th November, providing
information about studying at Oxford
University to school pupils attending the
fair, as well as to parents and teachers.
We talked to a large number of
potential applicants and received a very
positive response. We also ran practice
interviews for several candidates.
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Thursday 8th October - Oxford Society Welcomes Leading Medieval Historian
Lecture and Dinner at the Cercle Munster
“By around the time of Edward II’s deposition in 1327, Parliament has acquired the general shape which it would keep all through the later Middle Ages and into Tudor England and to some extent into modern times.”
This was the opening statement of the Lecture by Dr John Maddicott, the acknowledged expert on the origins of the English Parliament. So what might initially have seemed a very specialised and even purely academic subject immediately announced itself as being of direct relevance not only to England and the British Isles, but to all democratic parliamentary political structures, including that of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. What followed was a scholarly and gripping story given by a total master of his subject
Dr Maddicott, recently retired from his position of professor of history at Exeter College Oxford (where he taught one of the OUSL?s founder members), is the author of, amongst many other things, the definitive biography of Simon de Montfort V, Earl of Leicester.
Over 50 people of a wide variety of nationalities attended the lecture which was followed by a vin d’honneur and, for those who wished to stay and meet Dr. Maddicott and become involved in a lively and interactive question-and-answer session, an entertaining dinner at the Cercle Munster.
The full text of the Lecture is available here
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Wednesday 10th June - AGM and Annual Dinner
The society held its AGM and annual dinner in the traditional setting of the Cercle Munster. Dr Rolf Tarrach, Rector of the University of Luxembourg, and a distinguished fundamental physicist and scientific administrator, spoke on the subject of “The Limits to Knowledge”.
In Dr Tarrach’s analysis, there exist both essential and temporary limits.
The essential limits are deep and remarkable:
- Firstly, as Kurt Gödel proved in 1931, mathematics is inexhaustible, in the sense that no finite set of axioms is enough to prove all non-trivial propositions of the discipline.
- Secondly, as Alan Turing showed in 1951, there are propositions undecidable by computer, and there is no formal test to distinguish a computer’s reasoning from that of a brain.
- Thirdly, as John Bell showed, if quantum mechanics is true, nature cannot be locally realistic. One therefore will never be able to predict elementary events.
- Fourthly, we will not be able to probe back much further toward the origins of the universe, as the accelerators needed to do so would be ridiculously large and expensive.
All these limits might be considered objective.
There are also strong subjective limits. Our brains are the fruit of evolution. They are incapable of understanding a world where local cause and local effect do not prevail. They cannot grasp intuitively the nature of quantum mechanics, and even less so that of quantum gravity. These limits to our thinking may also seriously constrain how humanity deals with the crisis of global warming. Our minds were formed to deal with the threats and forces that shaped the life of primitive man. They are not adapted to respond emotionally to forces that take effect over a hundred years and apply across the whole surface of the globe. Moreover, if there is any pressure to reshape the brain, the process of evolution by natural selection works far too slowly to allow mankind, through a better-adapted brain, to adapt to the forces shaping our future.
Dr Tarrach also, more speculatively, examined the limits of thinking. Recent neurological research has shown that the autonomous brain reaches its decision one third of a second before the conscious brain is aware of it. Dr Tarrach thought that this might put the notion of free will in doubt. He showed that we know very little about how the brain works. We can expect that our knowledge of the brain will rapidly grow. Perhaps our reasoning brain will find new ways to overcome the deficiencies of the instinctive and intuitive processes of thought and action.
One field for improvement is the handling of information. We are burdened with ever greater volumes of it, but we have not improved our ability to convert facts and data through concepts into knowledge.
Dr Tarrach concluded with some thoughts on subjects which we decide not to know all about, such as our risk of succumbing to a disease for which one might have a genetic predisposition.
A number of Cambridge graduates were among the many guests. Ideas flowed freely, stimulated by Dr Tarrach’s brilliant talk, which he delivered in two parts, during the pauses between the courses of an excellent dinner, impeccably served by the staff of the Cercle Munster. All present agreed that the evening wa an unqualified success.
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Saturday
16th May - Piano Recital by Rüdiger
Pansch
Thanks to the good offices of our
member, Jan Koenighaus, the Society was
privileged to present a piano recital
performed by Rüdiger Pansch. Pansch
obtained the degree of MJur at Lincoln
College, Oxford, where he also won musical
awards, and now practises as an attorney
for IP law in Duesseldorf. The venue was
the private concert room of Mr and Mrs.
Edward Seymour.
The programme comprised piano
works by Haydn (Variations in F minor -
Hoboken XVII:6) and Schumann (Arabesque in
C major op. 18, followed by Etudes
Symphoniques op.13) and a powerful encore
in the Fantasie Impromptu Op. 66 by
Chopin.
Both main pieces were structured
as variations on a theme, but there the
resemblance ended. The theme of the Haydn
piece was simple and was built up slowly
through multiple variations. The theme of
Schumann symphonic etudes was rich and
complex and the variations passed through
lyrical foothills to mountains of
passionate intensity. The pianist and
instrument were in perfect
rapport.
The concert was originally planned
to be a recital of the Schubert song cycle,
Die Winterreise. The indisposition
of the baritone, Nick Berry, prevented
this. The prodigious talent of Rüdiger
provided a brilliant fallback programme. We
hope to arrange the original programme
another day.
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Friday
20th March 2009 - Lectures by Prof. Vernon
Bogdanor
Members of the society were
invited to hear Professor Vernon Bogdanor
CBE FBA speak on “The New British
Constitution”, at a colloquium at
Luxembourg University co-sponsored by the
British Embassy and by the Society, and on
“Churchill and Europe”, at the
annual Winston Churchill Memorial Lecture,
hosted by the British Embassy and the
British-Luxembourg
Association.
Prof. Bogdanor is Professor of
Government at Oxford University and a
fellow of Brasenose College Oxford. A
member of the society was instrumental in
assisting the University and the British
Embassy in arranging the
visit.
In the first lecture, Prof.
Bogdanor declared that the British
constitution was not so much unwritten as
uncodified and scattered through many
pieces of legislation. In the modern world
it was hard to defend its scattered and
unsystematic character. A citizen should be
able to see his constitutional position in
a single document.
That a constitution denies sovereignty to
parliament is a stumbling block. In practice, the
British Parliament has lost power both through a
formally irreversible transfer of competence to
Europe and through devolution, which is only
theoretically reversible. Devolution takes
diverse forms. In Scotland, all domestic
legislation is devolved, leading to striking
differences with England. In Northern Ireland,
wide powers have been devolved to the political
system, which includes an obligatory coalition
for government, while the Welsh Assembly only has
power to pass secondary legislation. The House of
Lords should, in Prof. Bogdanor’s view, be
directly elected by proportional representation.
If this came about, it would make it harder to
defend the present system for electing MPs. It
might transfer authority to the upper house from
the
lower.
In the second lecture, Prof.
Bogdanor’s view was that
Churchill’s mind on Europe was
divided. Although his famous Zurich speech
of 1946 reflected his long-held views, the
unplanned speech content was prompted by
Duncan Sandys, his son-in-law. His view was
that Britain must at least try to join
Europe and see whether she could reconcile
her separate goals with Europe’s need
to unite, and thus avoid another war
between France and Germany. Churchill at
times spoke of Britain as a benevolent
outsider but at other times as an integral
part of Europe. The Commonwealth, he
thought, could be a base for
Britain’s influence in the world,
even once it was made up of independent
states. The US special relationship was,
for him, real and strong. He believed that
a timely alliance with the US would have
avoided both world wars. At the height of
his career, he would have had Britain play
a large part in the European plan and would
have subsumed monetary interests and values
for the sake of the grand political aim of
peace.
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