Richard Goodkin: STEMming the Tide: Balzac and Statistical Humanity

This talk will delve into one of Balzac’s most thought-provoking novels, The Search for the Absolute. In this love story between a once-devoted husband and father and his adoring but ultimately disabused wife and daughter, the conflict between two fundamentally opposed notions of human values brings out compelling and surprising truths that help us to understand what is at stake today as we attempt to balance these opposing schools of thought.