4thBucharest Colloquium in Early Modern Science
Experiments and the Arts of Discovery in the Early Modern Europe
12-14 May 2013
Center for the Logic, History and the Philosophy of Science
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest
Recent research has been oriented towards the exploration of experiments, experimental methodologies and experimental practices in the early modern period. On the one hand, traditional histories of science and philosophy have been challenged by an increased number of examples that were not easily adapted to the existing categories (e.g., numerous observational practices and ways to note the reports of experiments). On the other hand, these historiographical categories have been criticized for their limited explanatory possibilities (e.g., quite often they described experiment in a way that was much closer to its development in the 18th and 19th centuries). Such problems revealed an urgent need to re-evaluate and change our traditional views concerning the experimental practice.
With our workshop on Experiments and the arts of discovery in early modern Europe, we are interested to put together researchers interested in the study of the multiple uses of experimentation in the 16th and 17thcenturies (e.g., natural philosophy, natural history, mixed-mathematics, medicine, moral philosophy, theology etc.). Here is a non-exhaustive list of such points of interest: (a) The creative value(s) of early modern experiments; (b) The use of experiments in analogical thinking and the use of experiments in ‘grounding’ analogies; (c) The methodologically driven experimentation.
Program:
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Chair: Dana Jalobeanu (Bucharest)
10:00-11:00 Peter Anstey (Sydney), Experimental natural history (keynote lecture)
11:00-11:30 Coffee Break
11:30-12.30 Sergius Kodera (Vienna), The Laboratory as Stage: Giovanni Battista della Porta’s Experiments
12.30-13.30 Lunch Break
Chair: Cesare Pastorino (Sussex)
13.30-14.30 Arianna Borrelli (Wuppertal), The invisible technique: the emergence of transparent glass and the development of Giovan Battista Della Porta\’s optical experiments
14.30-15:00 Coffee break
15:00-16:00 Evan Ragland (Alabama), Making Trials in Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth-Century Medicine
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30-17:30 Jonathan Regier (Paris), Mathematics and experiment in Kepler\’s De stella nova (1604)
17:30-18:00 Coffee break
18:00-19:00 Round-up discussion: Experiments in Early Modern Philosophy.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Chair: Roger Ariew (South Florida)
10:00-11:00 Daniel Garber (Princeton), Merchants of Light and Mystery Men: Bacon’s Last Projects in Natural History
11:00-11.30 Cofee break
11:30-12.30 Sorana Corneanu (Bucharest), Experimenting with the Operations of the Mind: Medicine and the ‘Intellectual Arts’
12:30-13:30 Lunch break
Chair: Richard Serjeantson (Cambridge)
13:30-14.30 Kathryn Murphy (Oxford), Strategies of Experimental Reading in Francis Bacon and Dean Christopher Wren
14.30-15:00 Coffee break
15:00-16:00 Vlad Alexandrescu (Bucharest), Descartes et le rêve (baconien) de \”la plus haute et plus parfaite science\”
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30-19:00 Round-up discussion: Baconian experimentation (Proponents: Dana Jalobeanu, Cesare Pastorino, Mihnea Dobre, Oana Matei, Sebastian Mateiescu, Claudia Dumitru)
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Chair: Daniel Garber (Princeton)
10:00-11:00 Mordechai Feingold (Caltech), What was the \”Experimental Philosophy\’?(keynote lecture)
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11:30-12:30 Albrecht Heeffer (Ghent), The use of material models in physico-mathematics
12:30-13:30 Lunch break
Chair: Peter Anstey (Sydney)
13:30-14:30 Koen Vermeir (Paris), John Wilkins\’ mathematical experiments and the perpetuity of discovery
14:30-15:00 Coffee break
15:00-16:00 Benedino Gemelli (Bellinzona), Francis Bacon in Isaac Beeckman’sJournal
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30-17:30 Alberto Vanzo (Warwick), Experimental philosophy in late seventeenth-century Italy
17:30-18:00 Coffee break
18:00-19:00 Round-up discussion (Cesare Pastorino)
Organizers:
Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest) and Cesare Pastorino (Essex University)