4th Bucharest Colloquium in Early Modern Science, 12-14 May 2013
4th
Bucharest 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 17th
centuries (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’s
Journal
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)
Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest) and Cesare Pastorino (Essex University)
