EMPHASIS 2013-2014
The purpose of EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination) is to provide a London forum for scholars working in the history of philosophy, intellectual history and the history of science of Europe in the period 1400-1650. The term ‘philosophy’ is interpreted in its fullest Renaissance sense, and includes such themes as: Neoplatonism, scholasticism and late Aristotelian philosophy, Epicureanism, stoicism, scepticism, cosmological theories, the classification of the disciplines, encyclopaedism, Lullism, the art of memory, the philosophy of mathematics, theories of the soul, theories of language and signs, etc.
- 12 October 2013: Philipp Nothaft (Warburg Institute), ‘Early Human History and the Uses of Diodorus in Renaissance Scholarship’
- 9 November 2013: Crofton Black (Independent Scholar), ‘“So they vanished into their thoughts”: Archangelo Burgonovo on kabbalah and philosophy’
- 7 December 2013: Dario Tessicini (University of Durham): ‘Harmony vs. Unity: Giordano Bruno, Copernicus, and the abandonment of circular uniformity’
- 18 January 2014: Niall Hodson (University of Durham), ‘Henry Oldenburg as a Reader and Reviewer of Scientific Texts’
- 8 February 2014: Scientific Instruments in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries – Alexi Baker (CRASSH, University of Cambridge), ‘Craft, commerce and community: the “scientific” instrument trade in early modern London’; James Everest (University College, London), ‘Thomas Hobbes’s Optical Instruments’
- 8 March 2014: Nydia Pineda de Avila (QMW): ‘The Lunar Vale in Micrographia: competing selenographies in Robert Hooke’s engraving of the Moon’
- 5 April 2014: Jan Loop (University of Kent at Canterbury), ‘Polemical Use of Islam in Christian Religious Conflicts’
- 10 May 2014: Daniel Stolzenberg (UC Davis): ‘A Spanner and His Works: Athanasius Kircher and the Republic of Letters’
- 7 June 2014: Rob Iliffe (University of Sussex): ‘Newton, academic freedom and the perfection of the understanding as a religious obligation’
Convenors: Dr Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck, University of London) and Dr Anthony Ossa-Richardson (Queen Mary, University of London). To be added to the EMPHASIS e-mailing list, please contact Dr Stephen Clucas.
For the most up-to-date information on the seminar please consult the seminar website.