The Evolution of Knowledge - A Scientific Meeting in Honor of Jürgen Renn

Session

Origins & Evolution of Knowledge

Jul 14, 2025, 9:30 AM

Main Hall (SISSA)

35. Chair: Benjamin Steininger

Benjamin Steininger

7/14/25, 9:30 AM

16. On cognitive artefacts

Stephen Levinson (Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)

7/14/25, 9:35 AM

“All this hints at the role of material culture as the backbone of an evolution of knowledge ... what if the game-changing role of material culture as a means of cognition also extends to the symbolic means of our thinking...?” (Renn, Evolution of Knowledge 2020:50-1)
Wearing the hat of a cognitive anthropologist rather than an historian, I will try to amplify these ideas of Renn’s. I...

11. The tangled roots of the mathematics of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution

Jens Høyrup (Honorary Research Fellow, Institute for the History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

7/14/25, 10:05 AM

Much new happened to European mathematics in the 17th–18th centuries. Not all of it (in particular number theory) entered interaction with the general scientific revolution, though they can be counted on their own as ingredients in the development. On the other hand, the new double analysis – algebra and infinitesimal analysis – can be regarded as decisive infrastructure of the astronomical...

10. Inheritance and innovation: casting technology and craft production of bronzes in Shang dynasty (16th BC-11th BC), China

Prof. Yu Liu (Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing)

7/14/25, 10:30 AM

The piece-mold casting technology in China was initially formed in Erlitou period （18th BC-16th BC）and went to the first climax in late Shang dynasty（13th BC-11th BC）, but the details of the evolution path were not clearly known so far. The formation of piece-mold casting technology tradition in ancient China, which is very different from mainly using the forging method and lost-wax process to...

21. Discussion

Svend Hansen

7/14/25, 11:15 AM