Seeds of Thought: A Lunchtime Talk with Tim Ingold

About this Event

Of Tufts And Turbines: Colliding Worlds on the North Sea Coast

The spectacular dunes of Forvie, in coastal Northeast Scotland, were formed during a violent storm in the fifteenth century, which buried the village which once lay there, at the mouth of the river Ythan. Nowadays, they host extensive tracts of marram grass, which also help to stabilise the sands. How might this dune landscape appear to a tuft of grass? Blown by the wind, the blades of grass describe little circles in the sand. Thus, does every tuft make a place for itself. Look up, however, and you see helicopters, shuttling to and from offshore rigs. Look out to sea, and you see a parade of wind turbines. Their blades also rotate around their axes, making circles in the air. How does the order of the turbine and the helicopter compare with that of the tuft? Today, we witness the collision between these two worlds. Which, in the long term, will be last out?

About the Speaker

Tim Ingold is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written on environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on animals in human society, and on human ecology and evolutionary theory. His more recent work explores environmental perception and skilled practice. Ingold’s current interests lie on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013), The Life of Lines (2015), Anthropology and/as Education (2018), Anthropology: Why it Matters (2018), Correspondences (2020), Imagining for Real (2022) and The Rise and Fall of Generation Now (2023). Ingold is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2022 he was made a CBE for services to Anthropology.

About Seeds of Thought

Over the coming months, we invite you to a menu of fascinating ideas over lunch. In our talks, we invite speakers whose research explores our relationship to time and place through a variety of disciplines, ranging from biology, geology, and anthropology to art history or architecture: together, we consider the forces that shape life on our world and beyond, and ways of engaging with environmental shifts on various scales in both practical and imaginative ways.

Between October and December, we are delighted to be joined by Mary Arnold-Foster, Tim Ingold and Murdo Macdonald.

Coffee, tea, and water will be available, with sandwiches for pre-order at the Visitor Centre. Free for St Andrews Botanic Garden Friends Members, £3 for visitors

Also check out other Arts events in St Andrews.