Calling All Great Thinkers: The East Midlands Needs You!
15 January 2010
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694 - 1778) the author and philosopher. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
Derby is the latest UK city to host a 'Salon' with a difference - a haven for modern day thinkers from across the region to debate their ideas.
Salons were fashionable in 17th and 18th century France to champion philosophy around the time of The Enlightenment and before the French Revolution.
Created and organised by aristocratic ladies, Salons were organised to hear the great thinkers of the time such as Rousseau and Diderot (chief editor of Encyclopédie)to debate their meanings, for entertainment.
Now the East Midlands region is to launch a modern day equivalent of a Salon on Tuesday January 26, at 7pm in the Edale Room of the Hallmark Hotel (formerly Midland Hotel), in Derby.
The Salon revival began in 2005 when the Brighton Salon was launched by Dan Travis, Sean Bell and Rob Clowes.
Other successful Salons in Great Britain are based in Manchester, Belfast and Leeds as keen modern thinkers look to stimulate debate and ideas just as their successful peers of yesteryear did.
Salons have attracted many progressive thinkers including Frank Furedi, Kenan Malik, Austin Williams, Jeremy Taylor, Helene Guldberg and James Woudhuysen.
The East Midlands Salon is the brainchild of University of Derby Education expert Professor Dennis Hayes, Dr Vanessa Pupavac from the University of Nottingham and a third organiser Ciaran Guilfoyle, and will be supported by members of discussion circles who have been meeting in pubs around Derbyshire.
Professor Hayes said: "In France, during the 17th and 18th centuries, aristocratic ladies set up these salons for entertainment and because they believed ideas were important. They wanted to know where the world was going, and of course to flirt.
"The Salon was central to the intellectual ferment of the end of 18th Century. They hosted the great thinkers of the time, such as Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire.
"They were the scenes of excitement, outrage, and the shock of the new in a time when 'the new' still seemed possible. They signalled a time when the future was still an unwritten book.
"The East Midlands Salon is organised in homage to those days which only came to end with the French Revolution and the arrival of a new constellation: the age of revolutions. Many historians think that Salons helped develop the ideas that ushered in that age.
"Modern Salons in the UK, such as in Manchester and Leeds, are doing well and we are delighted to launch a Salon in the East Midlands. We are hosting it close to Derby Railway Station to make it as accessible across the region as possible, for anyone interested in taking part to be able to get there."
At The East Midlands launch on January 26, Professor Ray Tallis will defend the proposition: 'I Am NOT A Beast' and explain 'how we humans evolved to be so different'.
Professor Tallis was Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford between 1987 and 2006. He is an expert in the field of neurology of old age (epilepsy and stroke) and neurological rehabilitation, and has published articles journals such as Nature, Medicine and The Lancet.
Setting the scene for the Salon's inaugural debate, Professor Tallis said: "Darwinian thought has increasingly invaded the humanities and, indeed, our thinking about human nature. We have, it seems, escaped the prison of a supernatural understanding of ourselves only to embrace an entirely naturalistic one that sees us as mere animals, subject to the same laws as those that govern the lives of other animals.
"In this talk, I will argue that we are fundamentally different from other living creatures but that our escape from biology was by biological means, which I will describe. We can therefore be good Darwinians without succumbing to 'Darwinitis'. Humanism does not require us to deny our biological roots, only to acknowledge that our biological roots do not explain our cultural leaves."
Entry to the Salon is £5. There is ample parking and the hotel is next to the railway station: Visit www.hallmarkhotels.co.uk/derby.
To register or for further details please contact Professor Dennis Hayes, email: d.hayes@derby.ac.uk, or telephone: 07791 200341.
The East Midlands Salon has a Facebook Group for all to join. It is at www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=135454058934&ref=ts.
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For more information about this news release, contact Deputy Head of Corporate Relations Simon Redfern on 01332 591942 or 07748 920038 or email: s.redfern@derby.ac.uk.
