“ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” —John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

This series turns to the intertwined claims of beauty and truth—not merely as an escape from stress and distraction, but as a way of seeing more clearly. Bringing together thinkers and makers from many fields, these lectures explore what happens when rigorous observation meets imagination. Across eight talks, an architect, organist, astronomer, poet, anthropologist, biologist, and two literary scholars move from the speed, sound, and iridescence of a hummingbird’s courtship dive to the truth-telling irony of Austen’s fiction, from stellar explosions to the resonant precision of the Chapel organ. Along the way, we ask what a piece of music might share with the Milky Way, or a novel with the patterned intelligence of the natural world.

These conversations offer more than information. They invite sustained attention—to symmetry and surprise, to form and feeling, to the ways knowledge and perception shape one another. Looking closely at our world and the ones we create, we return to Keats’s enduring claim about the truth in beauty and the beauty of truth.

NOTE: Lectures will be held in the Friend Center Auditorium at William and Olden Streets. Evening parking is free in any Princeton University lot. The closest options include Lot P10 behind Thomas Sweet (GPS: 41 William Street) and accessible Lot P13 across from P10, near Princeton University Press. Lot P2, behind the Nassau Street Post Office, can be accessed via Olden Street only (GPS: 15 Olden Street).

For additional parking, the Prospect Avenue Garage (North Garage) on Prospect Avenue between Olden and Murray Place is about a 0.28-mile walk from the Friend Center. On-street parking is available on Olden and William Streets, with metered hours Monday–Thursday (9 am–8 pm).

The Friend Center (41 William Street) and additional campus parking can be found on the Princeton Interactive Campus Map. 

You will receive a course ticket for the entire series at check-in at the first lecture you attend. No prior confirmation will be sent.

• Oct. 6 Building for Planet and People
  SIGRID M. ADRIAENSSEN, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Director, Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education; Director, Program in Technology and Society; Director, Program in Entrepreneurship, Princeton University
   
• Oct. 13 NO LECTURE
   
• Oct. 20 Demystifying the Pipe Organ
  ERIC D. PLUTZ, University Organist, Princeton University Chapel; Lecturer in Music, Princeton University NOTE: This lecture will be held in the Princeton University Chapel on campus rather than the Friend Center Auditorium. Experience the Chapel organ in its intended setting for a thrilling acoustic experience.
   
• Oct. 27 Strange New Worlds: Exploring Planets Outside Our Solar System
  JOSHUA N. WINN, Professor of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University
   
• Nov. 3 Austenian Irony and the Truths of Human Disclosure
  CLAUDIA L. JOHNSON, Murray Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, Princeton University
   
• Nov. 10 Animal Tales, Curious Scientists, and the Advantages of Being Slow
  ERIKA L. MILAM, Charles C. and Emily R. Gillispie Professor in the History of Science; Professor of History, Princeton University
   
• Nov. 17 Within the Hour: Poems and Aphorisms
  JAMES RICHARDSON, Poet, Aphorist and Professor of Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts, Emeritus, Princeton University
   
• Nov. 24 NO LECTURE
   
• Dec. 1 Beauty Queen
  ANNE CHENG, Louis W. Fairchild Class ’24 Professor of English, Princeton University
   
• Dec. 8 The Secret Life of Hummingbirds
  MARY C. STODDARD, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University