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,...
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...
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...
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...
