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

Session

Science & Society

Jul 14, 2025, 2:00 PM

Main Hall (SISSA)

36. Chair: Robert Schulmann

7/14/25, 2:00 PM

14. Theatre of science. Solving mathematical problems in early modern jesuit colleges

Rivka Feldhay (Associate Professor, Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University.)

7/14/25, 2:05 PM

My lecture will focus on practices of dissemination of scientific literacy by Jesuit educators of the 17th century. The Jesuits were prominent carriers of the pre-modern scientific tradition that crystallized in medieval universities around Aristotle’s books of nature. These, they taught as introduction to metaphysics, theology and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. The Jesuits, however,...

40. Geopraxis

Pietro Daniel Omodeo

7/14/25, 2:35 PM

In my talk, I will illustrate a concept that is freely inspired by Jürgen’s recent book on the Evolution of Knowledge. I will take examples from the long-durèe history of Venice, in order to argue for the fruitfulness of a historical inquiry into the geo-anthropological nexus which puts material human agency at the center. In my presentation, I will privilege early modernity as a time of...

45. Chair: Jürgen Jost

7/14/25, 3:25 PM

34. Scale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolution

David Wolpert (professor at the Santa Fe Institute)

7/14/25, 3:30 PM

Throughout the Holocene, societies developed additional layers of administration and more information-rich instruments for managing and recording transactions and events as they grew in population and territory. Yet, while such increases seem inevitable, they are not. Here we use the Seshat database to investigate the development of hundreds of polities, from multiple continents, over...

22. Discussion

Jürgen Jost, Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Robert Schulmann

7/14/25, 3:50 PM

17. What did Urban VIII and Galileo discuss during the “six long meetings” in 1624?

Kostas Gavroglu (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)

7/16/25, 10:25 AM

Science and Society

In this Conference honoring Jurgen Renn, one of the outstanding historians of science, I thought to deviate a little from the strict protocol in the presentation of papers. Since, thankfully, I was asked for an evening lecture, I would take the risk of talking about something I have not published anything before! At the end of April 1624, Galileo visited Rome to pay his respects to his old...

19. Tracing the roots of the European scientific enterprise: The Accademia del Cimento in Florence.

Giulia Giannini (Professore associato, Dipartimento di Studi Storici, Università degli Studi di Milano La Statale)

The Accademia del Cimento is the first European society to put experimentation at the core of scientific activity and to be supported by a public power. It lasted only ten years (1657-1667), the same years that saw the establishment of societies of greater fame and longevity such as the Royal Society and the Académie Royale des Sciences. The copious amount of records left by its members casts...