Knowledge, representation and the language(s) of science
Wednesdays, 5 pm, University of Technology, Nuremberg, and online (for the zoom link drop me an email)
Organized by Dana Jalobeanu
The Research Seminar of the Early Modern Lab is a weekly hybrid meeting of researchers and students, dedicated to discussing work-in-progress and research projects. It aims to be both inter and cross-disciplinary, bringing together scholars from different fields: history of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, classics, digital humanities, AI and computer science. To foster the dialogue, we propose a general research theme Knowledge, representation and the language(s) of science.
Early modern period is one of great transformations, a melting pot of doctrines and ideas, a time of bold experimenting with new objects, methods, and forms of representation in the production of knowledge. We are particularly interested to follow such mutations in what pertains to aspects of language (broadly understood): concept formation, new forms of representation, re-signifying and translation, dreams of new, artificial languages. We are also interested in the changes and reconfiguration of traditional forms of writing and argumentation, and in pre-modern experiments with forms of recording experience. But we want to also address these questions from a wider perspective, asking questions about how and why such changes happen, more generally. We hope to gain a comparative perspective and a better insight by looking, sometimes, at other historical periods, and by looking at our present time, when new language(s) and new forms of representation have transformed so many sciences.
Meanwhile, papers presented in the seminar do not have to be restricted to these topics. If you are interested in joining us or if you would like to give a paper in our seminar, send an email to….
Summer 2025
May 28 Rodolfo Garau (University of Hamburg) [the talk will begin exceptionally at 6 pm]
How Do Sciences End? The Disappearance of Astrology and the Limits of Internalism and Externalism
(the speaker will be on-site)
June 4 Gideon Manning (Claremont Graduate College)
Visualizing Nature with Text and Image: Science’s Grammar of Anatomical Illustration
(the speaker will be online)
June 18 Daniel Garber (Princeton University)
Reading the Rocks: Steno vs. Descartes on the Anatomy of the Earth
(the speaker will be online)
June 25 Petr Pavlas (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
Circulus victoriosus. Early Modern Cultural Imagery and the Rise of the Encyclopaedia
(the speaker will be on site)
July 9 TBA
Wintersemester 2025-2026
September 5 (mark it is a Friday!) Peter Anstey (Catholic University of Australia) in person
October 1 Silvia Manzo (University La Plata, Argentina) “Freedom from impediments in politics and natural philosophy. Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, and the Late Scholastic Legacy” (in person)
October 15
October 22 Martin Lenz (Hagen) (in person) Christian Thomassius on Language and Thought
October 29 Alan Stewart (Columbia) TBC (in person)
November 12 Stephan Schmidt (Hamburg) Spinoza and the Possibility of Finite Modes” (in person)
November 19
November 26 Martin Korenjak (Innsbruck) (in person) „More geometrico. Euclid’s Elements as a structural model“.
December 10
Spring Semester 2026
May 27, 2026 Lorraine Daston (in person)
Dana Jalobeanu 