About this Event
Our Autumn Gifford Seminar unpacks key themes and questions from Professor Steven Shapin's Gifford Lecture at the University of Edinburgh.
Esteemed historian of science Professor Steven Shapin joins us for the RSE's Gifford Seminar, where we'll look back on themes from his keynote lecture at the University of Edinburgh. Together, with questions from other expert panellists and the audience, we'll dive deeper into the relationship between food, society, and ethics.
Please note: You do not need to have attended Professor Shapins's lecture at the University of Edinburgh before coming along to this event. You can find a helpful summary of Professor Shapin’s lecture below, which we'll discuss in detail in this talk at the RSE.
Abstract of Professor Shapin's
The dietary order has always been part of the moral order, but the idioms linking them have historically changed.
In the distant past, secular sentiments told you to “eat to live, not live to eat”, and Christian morality counted gluttony among the Deadly Sins. In traditional dietetic medicine, moderation in eating and drinking was the path to both virtue and health, and the cosmology of elements and qualities (hot, cold, moist, and dry) told you what sorts of foods were good for your temperament, while also helping to make your temperament, what you were like as a civic and moral being.
That idiom is largely absent in present-day nutritional sensibilities: what is good for you is largely disengaged from what is good, health from personal virtue. Qualities have been replaced by constituents, proteins, fats, carbohydrates; eating too much is not a sin but a risk factor.
Yet the moral order still has its place on our dinner tables, while the elements of that morality have changed. What is good for us may not be part of virtue, but our eating choices now bear upon what is good for the planet, good for the social and economic order, and good for the plants and animals that we either eat or refrain from eating.
How have these changes marked out culture and our sense of who we are?
Important points to note
- This event is suitable for age 16+
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Event venue & nearby stays
The Royal Society Of Edinburgh, 22-26 George Street, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
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