Construction(s) of science(s). Research Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

Thursday, 05 June 2025, 14.00, Costel Cristian (University of Bucharest), The Ontology of the Imperceptible: Bacon’s Synthesis of Atomism and Vitalism in Natural Philosophy

The relationship between Baconian metaphysics of matter and the atomistic tradition has been a subject of controversy in contemporary scholarship. This debate stems largely from Francis Bacon’s ambiguous stance toward classical materialism particularly in his references to Democritus and the atomist school. Interpretations vary significantly: some scholars adopt the classical view, arguing that atomism was a feature of Bacon’s early thought but was later replaced by a metaphysics of spirits and their appetites in his mature works, such as Novum Organum and Sylva Sylvarum (Kargon 1966; Rees 1980).

Conversely, more recent scholarship posits a continued adherence to atomism alongside his theory of spirits and their motions (Manzo 2001). At the opposite end of the spectrum, some scholars propose an identification of atomism with the subtlety of material spirits (Giglioni 2010). To clarify Bacon’s metaphysical position, a clear distinction must be drawn between atoms—understood as imperceptible entities—and spirits, conceived as conglomerations of matter with specific structural properties. Notably, classical atomism, as articulated by Lucretius, faces similar challenges concerning the constitution of individual bodies.

To advance the discussion on Bacon’s engagement with atomism and his metaphysics of spirits, it is necessary to reassess their relationship through alternative interpretive lenses. From a theoretical standpoint, Bacon’s conception of the atom as an imperceptible yet ontologically existent entity suggests that atoms occupy a subordinate role to spirits. While spirits themselves remain elusive, they are more accessible to perception than atoms, reflecting Bacon’s broader view that the most subtle entities in nature possess real existence despite their opposition to direct observation – in this sense I will argue that Bacon is commited to levels of material reality. Simultaneously, Bacon’s vitalistic philosophy introduces spirits as dynamic conglomerations of matter, possessing distinct structures that facilitate change.

 

Thursday, 05 June 2025, 14.00, Grigore Vida (Romanian Academy, Section for Philosophy, Theology, Psychology, and Pedagogy), The Argument ‘the Cartesians have been greatly perplexed with’ and Samuel Clarke’s Ontology of Space and Time

At the heart of Samuel Clarke’s ontology of space and time lies a tension between the ways in which he describes the relation of space and time to God: while he often claims that space and time are properties of God, sometimes he speaks about space and time as being a consequences of God’s existence; he also holds – and this seems to be his last word on the matter – that space and time are ‘modes’ of God’s existence rather than properties in the usual sense. Some have argued that we are dealing with incompatible accounts, thus with an inconsistency, others, that it is simply a change of mind. I also see here an evolution of Clarke’s thought instead of an inconsistency, and what I am interested in is the role played in this evolution by an argument to which Clarke attaches much importance when he advocates a substance–attribute ontology and which he thinks ‘the Cartesians have been greatly perplexed with’. It is an argument that appears in various forms in Henry More, Gassendi, Newton, even in Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetics, and refers to the impossibility of removing space from our thoughts (or to “disimagine” space). Clarke thinks that the Cartesians could not avoid this argument, and that it has led them, even against their will, to attribute necessary existence to matter (i.e. to atheism). As I will try to show, Clarke’s strategy of accusing the Cartesians of this undesired consequence will turn against him when he will conceive space and not as attributes, but modes of God’s existence, and it will force him to abandon the a posteriori argument in favour of the a priori one.

Thursday, 15 May 2025, 14.00, Mihnea Dobre (University of Bucharest), Revisiting the canon of the early modern period: between philosophy and science

This paper aims to address some historiographical problems of evaluating the early modern period at the crossroads between the new philosophy and the new science. On the one hand, the traditional history of philosophy presents a narrative that is structured by two opposing traditions (Rationalism and Empiricism). Recent attempts to correct this image have created a more complex landscape, contesting not only the traditional historiographical categories, but also the traditional philosophical canon. On the other hand, the historiography of science revealed numerous aspects of concern with the metaphor of the scientific revolution, encouraging discussions about a broader participation of historical actors to the birth of the modern science. In a more unifying manner, the scholarship in the history of philosophy and science connects the two types of history, yet it retains the problem of defining a canon of early modern authors. I discuss these broader issues in the context of the emergence and spread of Cartesian natural philosophy, illustrating some of the more recent historiographical concerns with case studies from the second half of the seventeenth century.

Thursday, 17 April 2025, 14.00, Oana Matei (Vasile Goldis University Arad) Natural and Artificial Mixture in Nehemiah Grew’s Discourse. Concerning the Nature, Causes, and Power of Mixture

Nehemiah Grew’s Discourse Concerning the Nature, Causes, and Power of Mixture introduces some of Grew’s strongest theoretical claims in his Anatomy of Plants. This paper expounds how he argues for these claims (i.e., appeals to observation and experiments). Grew argues that valid knowledge for natural mixture can arise through observing and experimenting with artificial mixtures. He uses this idea — that such knowledge can be acquired through experimentation — to support at least some of his theoretical claims regarding mixture. In what follows, I argue that Grew uses his studies of artificial mixture to reject the theory of substantial form and instead contends that form is embodied in the regularity and order of the arrangements of small parts of matter. Moreover, I demonstrate how Grew’s observations at the microscopic level allowed him to make inferences about the sub- microscopic level, assigning certain properties of observable bodies (crystals of salts) to unobservable ones (atoms).

 

Thursday, 27 March 2025, 14.00, Rodolfo Garau (University of Hamburg), Between Opposition and Self-Preservation: Rethinking Scholastic Logic in Early Modern Natural Philosophy

The ideas of self-preservation and the logic of contraries—two key scholastic principles stating that nothing destroys itself and that opposing physical properties cannot coexist in the same subject—have been suggested to play a significant yet underestimated role in the work of several major early modern natural philosophers (for instance, see Damerow et al., 1992; Garber, 1992; Sangiacomo, 2015). These principles allowed for predicting the outcomes of interactions between physical agents based on their intrinsic qualities. However, they also introduced a problematic assumption: the naturalization of logical categories to infer the behavior of natural agents in interactions.
While the scholastic tradition justified such conclusions through its hylomorphic conception of nature, early modern novatores faced difficulties not only in identifying new sets of contraries but also in grounding opposition on new ontological principles. This talk examines how this challenge played out in the works of Bernardino Telesio (1509–1588), René Descartes (1596–1650), and Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). Each of these thinkers, though departing from Aristotelianism, had to contend with inherited assumptions about opposition and interaction in nature. By tracing the problematic use of these scholastic ideas in early modern non-Aristotelian natural philosophy, this talk tentatively explores how philosophers struggled to replace traditional explanatory models while still relying on some of their core logical structures.

 

Thursday, 16 January 2025, Melania Țucureanu (University of Bucharest), The New Atlantis – from storytelling to visual experience

Since publication (1627), The New Atlantis has been interpreted as an utopian novel, a blueprint for the organization of sciences or as a model for an ideal society where scientific progress does not contradict traditional values.My claim is that The New Atlantis can be interpreted in terms of visual imagery, therefore I argue that Bacon is successfully crafting a highly powerful visual rhetoric that has the effect of activating visual perception even in the absence of the direct stimulus, the image.
The current paper analyses some of the visual elements that spontaneously emerge, allowing each reader to create their Own New Atlantis. Language becomes similar to a pictorial technique that allows Francis Bacon to illustrate the new discovered territory starting from the basis of an already familiar world. He uses colors and comparisons that are intended to provide a vivid outline for the backgrounds and elements that are found in The New Atlantis. Any characteristic of an object can (with an already known object as a stable reference system) be imagined in different ways by different readers.
I argue that Francis Bacon is building The New Atlantis as a rhetorical exercise, using the persuasive power of images and their ability to stimulate the imagination and fuel the faculty of memory that Cicero considered to be one of the five components of rhetorical art. Thus, The New Atlantis is constructed according to an ancient tradition in rhetoric, employing the persuasive power of visual representations.
Bacon uses language in order to set up images, relying on their persuasive capacities, their ability to impress on each of his readers and he successfully advance The New Atlantis as a model for a flawless society.

 

Thursday, 12 December 2024, Ciprian Alexandru (University of Bucharest), William Harvey’s De motu cordis. (Ethics of) the Invention of a Discovery

It is still widely held that Harvey described the heart as a muscular pump that plays the primary part  in blood’s under pressure moveme

nt. At the same time, because in 1628 De motu cordis he explained the heart’s pulsatile (self-)movement through the presence of a vital faculty, Harvey can stand as an originator of modern vitalism. While these two lines of thought cannot be sustained simultaneously without contradiction, it can safely be argued that neither of them can be sustained at all. When Harvey finally deemed the heart a muscle – that is, in the 1651 De generatione – he did it in the context of affirming the primacy of the blood itself.

This primacy of the blood, recognizable even in De motu cordis, has been argued for by White (1986), but with the point of proving that Harvey manages to assimilate fundamental Aristotelian conceptions such that the two theories can be consistently sustained together. Still, within the whole corpus of Harvey’s writings, the argument in De motu cordis concerning the heart’s role in the circular movement of the blood looks awkward and proves useless. Bylebyl (1973, 1977), having spotted the awkwardness, nevertheless argued that Harvey did send to print, as De motu cordis, his true conception, only to change it later on, while Hill (1964, 1965) maintained that in 1628 Harvey tried in fact to conceal his actual discovery.

I agree with Hill that the reason for Harvey’s “expressing his views with less than full clarity” and “taking refuge behind the authority of Aristotle” is to be found in the political and academic context of the time, but I aim to improve on his argument by opening a discussion about the stages of Harvey’s conception of the heart as (not a) muscle. I then discuss whether the presuppositions, the method, the concepts, or the result of research carries more weight in assessing an allegedly received influence, in order to ask a broader question: was Harvey a Baconian (Willis, 1878); or was he an Aristotelian, and, if so, in what way (White, 1986; Cunningham, 2022); or was he, in a way, both (McCaskey, 2006)? And finally, in the light of recent research in cardiology, I consider the (ethical) implications of the possibility that today’s practical understanding about circulation is grounded not in Harvey’s true discovery, but in an invented one.

Thursday, 05 December 2024, Ciprian Alexandru (University of Bucharest), Readings from Harvey. Revoluting the circulation revolution

In 1847, when editing what was then considered to be the complete works of William Harvey, Willis thought that the English edition of the 1628 Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus, published in London in 1653, was a poor translation, made by someone “but little conversant with the subject,” and consequently produced a translation of his own. However, in 1999, White convincingly argued that the 1653 text is, in fact, Harvey’s own vernacular.

With this reading session we will try to go one step further and establish that the 1653 edition was no less than a second edition. Even if the actual text of De motu cordis was not altered a bit, still, along with the original work, this edition binds together two other treatises – James de Back’s Discovres and Harvey’s own 1649 Exercitationes duæ anatomicæ de circulatione sanguinis – which contradict what otherwise seems to be the main thesis of De motu cordis, that the heart, acting as a pressure pump, is the unique source of blood’s movement. Based on this, it will later be possible to analyse a wide range of implications of the fact that Harvey stated things rather convolutely in the original De motu cordis.

While, in order to grasp the full spectrum of Harvey’s thought about heart, blood, and circulation, readings from the 1616-1619 Prelectiones anatomiæ universalis and from the 1651 Exercitationes de generatione animalium are also indicated, selected fragments from the 1653 edition alone will suffice for apprehending the essence of his true conception. We begin with Chapter 14 and the most relevant parts of Chapters 8 and 15 from De motu cordis and then we look at a few fragments from de Back’s treatise and from Harvey’s De circulatione. Then, should time allow it, we will briefly analyse a few mistranslations from the 1847 Willis edition.

Thursday, 07 November 2024, Alexandru Liciu (University of Bucharest), The Science of Petrification and the early Academia Naturae Curiosorum (ca.1650-1700)

This contribution is an attempt to chart the manner in which the members of the early Academia Naturae Curiosorum, later Leopoldina, conceived of the subject of petrification. As early as the 1620s, in the period of his medical studies at the University of Jena, Johann Lorenz Bausch, later the first president of the Academia, composed a graduate dissertiation on petrification. It was written in a traditional disputational manner – Bausch recycled many of the arguments that were available in his time: the Aristotelian legacy that the closest efficient cause of metals is a alternation of heat and cold, that the autogeneration of metals is backed up by Scriptural exegesis (Moses’„crescite et multiplicamini”), accepts chrysopoeia, while, more generally, his account of the generation of metals is built on Agricola, Pliny, and Sennert. Later on, as part of the monographic programme specific for Lepoldina’s pre-1670s period, Bausch discussed the fossilia that were dubbed ‚unicorn horns’.  He preserved his initial sense that such bodies were self-generated, but accepted that, at times, they were owned to a hardening petrifying agent – he does seem, thus, to use both a vocabulary of macro-microcosmical analogies, and one of  mechanical spirits. Moreover, the story of the Biblical Flood is, for Bausch, rather a ‚fable’, as he questionned its efficiency as a physical mechanism for displacing the earth. When it came to collecting, Bausch listed both specimens that he believed were generated from a ‚seed’ (or self-generated), and some that were incrustations made by petrifying waters, while not thinking an universal explanation could be reached (although he inclined towards the position that most petrifactions were self-generated) – in this whole structure being closely inspired by Thomas Bartholin’s work dedicated to the fossil horn.

But Bausch was not alone in tackling the intricancies of petrification. At the insistance of Philpp Jacob Sachs von Lewenheimb, the first editor of the Miscellanea Curiosa, the polymath Johann Daniel Major engaged Sachs in a multifaceted conversation on the generation of stones. The resulting exchange was published as Major’s De Cancris et Serpentibus Petrefactis (Jena: Johannis Nisius, 1664), with an appended Epistola Responsoria by Sachs. In this, Sachs aimed to argue against Van Helmont’s notion of spontaneous petrifcation  (that the latter had put forth in the De Lithiasi), but both his argumentative process and Sachs’s answer do actually go back to other works ad normam et formam Academia Naturae Curiosorum: Sachs von Lewenheimb’s Gammarologia (Vratislaviae: Fellgiebel, 1664) (whose chapters VII, VIII, and an appendix deal with petrified crustaceans), Sachs’ Oceanus Macro-Microscopicus (Vratislaviae: Fellgiever, 1664), and Major’s Historia anatomica calculorum (Lipsiae: J.B.Oehler, 1662), as well as to a series of letters. Major was also engaged in translating works on petrification, such as his edition of Fabio Collona’s De Purpura (1675), whose chapter 21 became a commonplace of the discourse on petrification, and Francesco Stelluti’s Trattato del legno fossile nuovamente scoperto (1637), which Major rendered into Latin for the Miscellanea Curiosa in 1673. The Major-Sachs discussion extended in some of the entries of the Miscellanea Curiosa (also engaging other physicians, such as Salomon Reiselius), alongside others topics connected to petrification (e.g. the situation of shells phenomenon, the issue of engraved stones etc.), cuprising characters such as Georg Sebastian Jung, Georg Wolfgang Wedelius, Johann Daniel Geier, and others. Such networks of exchange on the matter of petrification will be explored in this talk.

Provisional program:

Thursday, 14 March 2024, Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest) Probatum est: the Magia naturalis in the context of English Experimental Philosophy

Giovanni Battista della Porta’s Magia naturalis was a very popular book at the end of the sixteenth century. It remained so for the first part of the seventeenth century, throughout the European continent. This paper deals with a second and very important period of its popularity, a sort of ‘come-back’ of the Magia naturalis in a different cultural context, that of the English experimental philosophy, in the second part of the seventeenth century. I show that, in this particular context, the Magia naturalis was read as a sourcebook of recipes and experiments, often as part of a new genre of ‘experimental’ secrets, i.e., a kind of recipes that required experimental trials. My analysis focuses on a particular aspect of this reading, which I call ‘enactment,’ the imaginative (and sometimes also actual) trying out of Della Porta’s recipes which often led to a rewriting, to a fixing of details or to a selection of recipes, separating those that might work from those that were eventually discarded. I discuss some such attempts to enactment, and I show that they are indebted to reading Della Porta’s recipes in the context of the new science, particularly in the context of Fracis Bacon’s philosophy of experiment (Jalobeanu 2020). This particular way of reading changes, as it were, the boundary between the library (or the scriptorium) and the laboratory, as we can see in the modification of function and meaning of the phrase probatum est that some experimental philosophers tend to append to the end of their recipes. Probatum est ceases to be an expression of authority and becomes more like the response to a challenge.

Thursday, 21 March 2024, Ciprian Alexandru (University of Bucharest), How did the heart become a muscle? Two preconceptions in Harvey and Descartes’ natural philosophy

As its title suggests, William Harvey’s Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (1628) made known two discoveries: that the blood’s movement follows a circular path; and that the heart functions as a propulsion pump. Cardiology today focuses on the second one, blood’s circulation being considered only as movement and not (also) as the structure that shapes the movement. I argue that the present concept of circulation is partial, in that it attributes causality to a part of a system against the system itself and that this partiality originated in the way William Harvey and René Descartes talked about the circulation in their first published works. Both of them ultimately changed their discourse, but the initial approach was the one that stuck. In order to asccertain that this partiality was not factually driven, I show that the most important of the two discoveries — blood’s circular motion through a (relatively) closed structure — was treated both by Harvey and Descartes in a twice partial way: not only they missed the opportunity (given by the theories and observations they themselves employed) to consider circulation from the point of view of the structure right from the beginning, but, concerning the activity of the heart, they also rejected the suction hypothesis, which was necessarily following from the very structure of their reasoning. I then show that one of the consequences of this partial approach was, soon enough, a third partiality — the definitive labeling of the heart as a muscle in 1675 by the authority of Nicolaus Steno — and I suggest as the main point of grasping the history of the concept of circulation in this way the eventual grounding of a reconsideration of what we call progress in medicine. Almost all of the elements ignored back then (by Harvey and Descartes themselves or by their succesors) are being explored today, but these explorations are marginal and overshadowed by the conviction that Harvey really did demonstrate that the blood is moved solely by the heart’s acting as a muscular propulsion pump. I argue that they shouldn’t be, because he didn’t.

Thursday, 28 March 2024, Claudia Dumitru (Princeton University), Trust and Inequality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes

Trust is not a very prominent concept for Hobbes scholarship, with a few exceptions, such as (Baumgold, 2013) and (Odzuck, 2017). This is partly due to a tacit comparison with John Locke, whose treatment of trust is more extended and has been treated as a benchmark for politics, following the work of John Dunn. It is arguably also a result of the fact that in contemporary discussions of trust, Hobbes usually features as a foil: the champion of contract as an antidote to generalized distrust and one whose impoverished view of trust reduces it to simple reliance. “It takes inattention to cooperation between unequals, and between those without a common language, to keep one a contented contractarian,” says Annette Baier in her influential paper on the topic, see (Baier, 1986, p. 241). She marshals the example of the “ultra-Hobbist child, who fears or rejects the mother’s breast, as if fearing poison from that source” (ibid.) as a case of innate distrust incompatible with survival, although she is forced to note that even Hobbes allows that infants must take their mother’s milk on trust.

This paper starts from the observation that not only that trust as a concomitant to contract is a central concept for Hobbes, but that he is also virtually alone among prominent early modern authors in trying to define trust explicitly in his theory of the mind. Trust is “a passion proceeding from belief of him from whom we expect or hope for good, so free from doubt that upon the same we pursue no other way” (EL 9.9). Its crucial feature is the setting aside of one’s own endeavor and relying on that of another (EL 11.12). This definition is different and wider than that of testimonial trust as confidence in the veracity of a speaker, which is also present across Hobbes’s works (EL 7.7, DC 18.4, L 7.5). The paper explores the role of trust as a passion in the cognitive architecture of Hobbesian agents and its importance for the establishing of political relationships, focusing particularly on conditions of inequality, such as those that characterize the formation of despotic and paternal dominion. It argues that, for Hobbes, trust (defined in this wider way which is strongly indexed to behavior) is inversely correlated to the passions of self-confidence and glory. This means that conditions of inequality, when correctly perceived and internalized by the weaker party, can be conducive to the establishing of trust on their part. It is the trust of the stronger party that is more difficult to get and that determines the shape of the relationship (a fact which also explains Hobbes’s unpalatable and consequently overlooked focus on the victor’s trust as determining the status of the vanquished after battle). The paper ends by discussing the almost paradoxical character of this trust and its implications for the stronger party’s assessment of their own power.

Thursday, 4 April 2024, Oana Matei („Vasile Goldiș” University of Arad), Natural and Artificial Life in Nehemiah Grew’s Discourse Concerning the Nature, Causes, and Power of Mixture

Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) was a physician, botanist, and secretary of the Royal Society. Grew’s Discourse Concerning the Nature, Cause and Power of Mixture (1682), in which he exposes his view on natural and artificial bodies and mixture, have never constituted the subject of a thorough investigation. According to Grew, bodies are the result of a process of mixture and there is no difference between natural and artificial mixture. This paper suggests the Discourse Concerning the Nature, Causes, and Power of Mixture introduces some of the strongest theoretical claims made by Grew throughout his works and the way in which he intends to argue for these claims is by appeal to observation, experience, and experiments. One of Grew’s arguments is that, by observing and experimenting with artificial mixture, valid knowledge for natural mixture will be provided. Also, the newly experiential acquired knowledge is presumed to support at least some of the theoretical claims formulated by Grew in respect to mixture. I will argue that, based on his study, observations of, and experiments with artificial mixture, Grew rejects the theory of substantial form and averts that form is embodied in the regularity and order of the arrangements of small parts of matter (atoms as he calls them). Also, observations made at the microscopic level allowed Grew to infer knowledge to the sub-microscopic level and to assign certain properties of observable bodies (crystals of salts) to unobservable ones (atoms).

Thursday, 11 April 2024, Melania Țucureanu (University of Bucharest), Scientific illustration – changing the focal point and revealing the invisible

Scientific illustration has a particular condition in the context of artistic discourse. It is, without any doubt, a form of art with strong scientific valences. It has the recklessness to go beyond art’s territory, access most scientific fields and sometimes has the privilege to herald great discoveries. It is a form of visual narrative, a way of representation and it often oscillates between impression and expression, observation and interpretation. Scientific illustration carries the justified ambition of an active component of knowledge.  It requires a specific language while operating with a variety of tools associated with the artistic and the scientific field as well. It is based on the knowledge of the producer and becomes an effective instrument for producing, preserving and disseminating scientific knowledge.

My attention will turn to the earliest graphic representations of objects that are outside our perception. I will focus particularly on events that I find equally important in  the field of science and the history of artistic representations. This study is based on the written and illustrated statements from Galileo Galilei’s Sidereus Nuncius and Robert Hooke’s Micrographia. The selection is not random, my criterion relies on the  processes of blending art and science in a truly revolutionary way.  Although the contributions to science of the two protagonists in no way can they be neglected, I will rather focus on their process of bringing into our visual field parts of nature that our imagination had never hoped to reach. The development of optical instruments brings worlds closer together, breaking down barriers of perception by concentrating pieces of the world into one single focal point. New territories are approached, in a context of an enhanced visual sense with the support of optical instruments. Thus, on the common playground, science amplifies the sense of sight and art generates extraordinary narratives.

The purpose of this research  is not the scientific truth that these illustrations claim, I am  rather interested in forms of representation as a result of overlaps of perceptual phenomena in the context of knowledge. Art has already been defined in several ways. From all of these we can easily discern  common threads, those of art as imitation and interpretation of nature. In this context scientific  representations, objectivity must be imposed on art.  In this context, the difference of perceptions, the precision of the instruments and the accuracy of the representational techniques must be subject of a thorough analysis. This inquiry involves exploring optical tools, mechanism of perception, concepts of visual representation, like the development of conceptual schemes, means or techniques of visual rendering. A very particular feature of scientific illustrations is the legend that must contain scientific or explanatory data. Drawing and describing the same object may, sometimes, raise great impediments. The existence of this explanatory statement establishes the value of truth of the represented image. When a concept is revealed by two different languages using different representations, things correspond, are complementary or entirely dissonant. Thus, by making the switch from one language to another, visual representations must be in a corresponding relationship with written exposition. Both languages, visual and written, must relate to the same reference object. Successive transitions from one language to another can alter both representations. So, before the claim of objectivity, it is very obvious that scientific illustration has to meet several requirements that can make the difference between revealing a familiar reality or a general fiction.

Thursday, 18 April 2024, Richard Serjeantson (University of Cambridge), ‘In Defence of Universities’: Higher education and its enemies in early modern Europe

The expansion of European higher education in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not always go unchallenged. Within the Protestant Reformation a radical strand developed that regarded the literature, philosophy, and even the theology that was taught within the universities as ungodly and unnecessary. Rebuttals of this dangerous challenge were in turn mounted by inhabitants of universities. This paper will consider universities and their enemies across the early modern period; a particular focus will be offered by an intriguing but hitherto unpublished book written in 1596 by the Oxford philosopher John Case, with the title ‘In Defence of Universities’.

Thursday, 25 April 2024, Silvia Manzo (ICUB Visiting Professor/ National University of La Plata / IdHICS-CONICET, Argentina), Francis Bacon on customs and laws in nature and art

This paper will discuss the distinction between the customs and laws of nature in Francis Bacon and its implications for his approach to operative science. Bacon distinguishes between two kinds of regularities in nature: customs and laws. While the former allow exceptions (weak regularities), the latter do not (strong regularities). However, the precise meaning of this distinction and its far-reaching implications are far from clear. By drawing attention to the legal terminology Bacon uses to account for the regularities and exceptions of nature, this paper aims to shed some light on the ontological, epistemological, and operational aspects of these concepts.

Thursday, 16 May 2024, Mihnea Dobre ((ICUB Humanities), Digital scholarship in the history of philosophy (and the sciences)

This talk aims to open a discussion about the use of digital methods and tools in the history of philosophy and sciences. As part of the series “Construction(s) of Science(s)” at the ICUB-Humanities, it will focus on the early modern period, but the methodological insights can be applied to other periods, too. I examine the interplay between distant and close reading strategies, the role of visualisations in fostering new research questions, and the use of network theory in exposing relations between concepts and authors. A case study at the intersection between Cartesian and Newtonian natural philosophies will be examined in more detail.

Thursday, 23 May 2024, Ruben Norloos (ICUB Humanities Fellow), Mind-Body Parallelism: Its Nature and Motivations

The standard way of describing mind-body parallelism is as a Cartesian dualist response to the problem of interaction. Descartes’ inability to account for mind-body interaction is solved by the parallelist, it is said, by denying that mind and body interact at all and instead seeing them as acting in parallel, arranged that way by God. But this characterization is flawed in several ways: in how it describes the problem; in its accuracy in describing Leibniz’ and (especially) Spinoza’s actual views; and, arguably, in making parallelism seem an extravagant or even bizarre view. What is mind-body parallelism, such that it can be ascribed to both Spinoza and Leibniz? And what is the mind-body problem, such that parallelism is a solution to it? The aim of this talk is to give a new account of mind-body parallelism by answering these questions.

Thursday, 30 May 2024, Bogdan Deznan (University of Bucharest), Platonism in 17^th Century England: Concepts and Contexts

Neo-platonic strains of thought witnessed a powerful and fertile resurgence in the context of early modern England. Of course, such concepts and themes were tailored to fit the theological-philosophical polemical encounters of the age. For this reason, the question of the existence or non-existence of Platonism as a viable theological and philosophical option in the period is more complex and multifaceted than has been thus far recognized. My presentation will handle this issue in a manner that will attempt to reconcile the specific conceptual articulations/innovations present in Neo-platonic authors, with concrete polemical contexts that certify an acute awareness of this line of thought among more orthodox contemporaries. This approach will also allow for a more comprehensive and nuanced discussion of the so-called Cambridge Platonists.

Thursday, 6 June 2024, Costel Cristian (University of Bucharest), Quantum in se est in the context of animate bodies and the early modern new meaning of natural tendency

The phrase quantum in se est which means as far as it is in itself, refers in general to the power of motion residing in a material body and has an important relevance for the early modern scientific developments. According to Bernard Cohen’s famous article from 1964,  Descartes was the first who used the phrase with a different meaning explaining his second law of inertia in the Principles of Philosophy. After the Cartezian development of the laws of motion early modern philosophers started to use this phrase, for example Spinoza and Newton. In this context, Cohen succeeded to explain only one side of the story regarding the reception of the phrase in the early modern scientific thinking, namely that Descartes gave a new meaning to this latin expression trying to grasp the causal motion of the body. We know that Lucretius used it to describe the motion of the atoms and also used this phrase in analogy with other two expressions: sua vi, and ex natura sua – but we do not know the latin context of the expression. In this sense, some important questions regarding the historical context and the conceptual use of this phrase could be raised: Who else besides Lucretius used this phrase? The motion which comes from the very self of the thing does it refers to animate or inanimate bodies in the latin intellectual context?

In my talk I will focus on the ancient reception of this phrase and I will try to demonstrate that roman authors used the phrase in order to explain the motion on the animate bodies which can add a new layer of interpretation to Cohen’s view. First, I will argue, following Don Fowler interpretation, that in classical works written by Lucretius, Cicero and Lactantius we can identify a precise utilization of the above-mentioned phrase relating to an animate conception of the bodies in contrast with the modern approach. Secondly, I will argue that Descartes did not only reformulate the phrase giving it a new meaning as Cohen states, but he is concerned simply with explaining the states of the body (motion or rest) using the mechanical model. To support my argument I will use two historical references, namely Cicero’s work Tusculane Disputationes and Lactantius’ christian work, Divinae Institutiones.