The Alphabet of Nature and the Idols of the Market:
Bacon on Languages, Natural and Human
The Warburg Institute 14-15 June 2013
Speakers: Sorana Corneanu (University of Bucharest), Marta Fattori (University of Rome, La Sapienza), Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute), Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest), Vera Keller (University of Oregon), Fabian Krämer (Ludwig-Maximillians Universität, Munich), James A.T. Lancaster (Warburg Institute), Giuliano Mori (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa – UCL), Kathryn Murphy (Oriel College, Oxford), Anthony Ossa-Richardson (Queen Mary), Marialuisa Parise (University of Rome, La Sapienza), Richard Serjeantson (Trinity College, Cambridge) and Ian G. Stewart (University of King’s College, Halifax).
This conference will examine Bacon’s philosophical engagement with language at various levels: metaphysical (the alphabet of the original desires of matter), epistemological (patterns of communication in experimental settings), rhetorical (strategies of persuasion in ethical, political and religious situations), grammatical (grammar as the antidote to postlapsarian obfuscation and post-Babelic fragmentation), multilingual (the relationship between Latin and the vernacular), emblematic (the relationship between verbal and visual thinking) and stylistic (the art of writing and the appropriate choice of literary genres). The conference will bring to the fore the tension at the heart of Bacon’s view of language; seen as both a stepping stone and a stumbling block to the pursuit of knowledge.
