The Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy was established in 2001 by Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest), Vlad Alexandrescu (University of Bucharest) and Dan Garber (Princeton University). For the next two decades, we met every summer in the mountains of Transylvania and the seminar evolved into an institution, with a reputation for both academic rigor and cordiality. In recent years, we were co-sponsored by the Philosophy Department at Princeton, the Institute for Research in the Humanities (ICUB) at the University of Bucharest, Hamburg Institute of Advanced Studies and the University of Technology, Nuremberg.
During 2020-2021 the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar moved online. Here is our more information about the online version of the seminar and here is our youtube channel.
More about the history of this institution here.
From 2025, the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy is moving to Nuremberg. University of Technology Nuremberg has joined in as a permanent partner. This year’s theme is The Losers of the Scientific Revolution.
The Princeton-Bucharest-Nuremberg Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy is organized by Dana Jalobeanu (UTN/University of Bucharest), Daniel Garber (Princeton) and Rodolfo Garau (UTN/University of Hamburg)
Princeton Bucharest Nuremberg Seminar
The Losers of the Scientific Revolution.
University of Technology Nuremberg
June 30-July 4, 2025.
Program
Monday June 30 [Ulmenstrasse 52i, seminar room 31]
9.30-10.00 Opening remarks (Gyburg Uhlmann, Dana Jalobeanu)
10.00-11.10 Inaugural lecture, Daniel Garber, Roads Not Taken.
11.10-11.30 Coffee break.
11.30-13.30 Reading group 1, Joseph Glanvill on Reason and Religion (Paul Lodge and Henry Straughan)
13.30-14.30 Lunch.
14.30-15.10 Ilary Virtanen, Robert Fludd and Early Modern Science.
15.10-15.50 Mattia Mantovani, Descartes the Egyptian.
15.50-16.20 Coffee Break.
16.30-18.30 Round table and open discussion: One big loser of the Scientific Revolution: Humanism (Dana Jalobeanu, Daniel Garber, Rodolfo Garau).
Tuesday July 1 [Ulmenstrasse 52i, room 31]
9.30-10.30 Invited lecture, Gideon Manning, Losing Description: Henry Powers, Robert Hooke and Early Modern Microscopy.
10.30-11.00 Coffee break.
11.00-13.00 Reading group 2, Natural magic and the scientific revolution. A reading group on Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Magia naturalis (Dana Jalobeanu, Donato Verardi, and Shen Chen)
13.00-13.50 Lunch.
13.50-14.30 Alexandru Liciu, Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel as historian of the earth – a loser of the Scientific Revolution?
14.30-15.30 Invited talk, Oana Matei, Resurrection from ashes: discussions on the possibility and impossibility of palingenesis (of plants) in the 17th century
Wednesday July 2
[Cube 1, Conference room, Dr.-Luise-Herzberg-Straße 4, 90461 Nürnberg – Mark the change of location!]
9.30-10.30 Invited lecture, Gyburg Uhlmann, Symbolic Mathematics: Vieta, Platonic Arithmetics, and Stoic Language Theory
10.30-11.00 Coffee break.
11-13 Reading Group 3. Astrology: One of the Main “Losers” of the Scientific Revolution? (Rodolfo Garau, Steven Vanden Broecke).
13.00-14.00 Lunch.
14.00-14.40 Michael Veldman, “They lost to phlogiston?!” Early modern elemental and mechanical theories of fire.
14.40- 15.20 Ovidiu Babes, Greene against Locke’s Primary and Secondary Qualities.
15.20-15.50 Coffee break.
15,50-16.30 Scott Harkema, Galileo and the Infinite Force of Percussion.
16.30-17.10 Ciprian Alexandru, Harvey vs. Harvey. Losing Blood by Circulation.
17.10-17.30 Break
17.30 – 19.30 Discussion/Debate: Leviathan and the Air Pump 40 years later (organized by Claudia Dumitru).
Thursday July 3 [Cube 1, Conference Room]
9.30-10.30 Invited lecture: Rodolfo Garau, Winning the Battle but Losing the War? The Peculiar Case of Gassendi.
10.30-11 Coffee break.
11-13 Reading Group 4, The War Between Vitalism and Mechanism in the Seventeenth Century: Who Was the Loser? The Case Study of the Debate Between Henry More and Robert Boyle (Daniel Garber).
13.00-14.00 Lunch.
14.00-14.40 William Eaton, New Studies in Cartesian Physics: Holes, Shadows, and Boundaries.
14.40- 15.20 Zach Ottati, Francis Bacon’s Matter Theory: From Atomism to Vitalism.
15.20-15.40 Coffee break.
15.40-16.20 Costel Cristian, Epicurean Model of Atomic Motions in the Context of Modern Natural Philosophy.
16.20-17.00 Luca Nahorniac, The Space-Time Structure Of Leibniz’s Monadic World.
17.00-17.20 Break.
17.20-18.30 Invited lecture, Scott Mandelbrote (University of Cambridge), ‘Sir John Finch among the philosophers’
18.30-20.00 Discussion – debate: Who was the biggest loser of the seventeenth century?
Friday July 4 [Cube 1, Conference room]
9.30-10.30 Invited talk, Mihnea Dobre, Searching for Losers of the Scientific Revolution: The First Modern Physicist.
10.30-11.00 Coffee Break
11- 11.40 Laura Georgescu, Digby on Universal, Objective Similarity and Objective Classification.
11.40 -12.20 Benjamin Goldberg, Losing the Battle, But Winning the War? Nicholas Culpeper and the Struggle to Reform English Medicine.
12.20-14.30 Lunch & round-table debate: Scientific Revolution or Scientific Reformation? What Historiographic Categories Are We Left With?
Dana Jalobeanu 