Seminar organised by Mogens Lærke, CNRS Research Director attached to the Maison Française d'Oxford (MFO) and to the Institut d'Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités (IHRIM) at ENS Lyon, and Sophie Roux, Professor of history and philosophy of science at ENS-PSL and Researcher at the République des Savoirs, with the support of the Paris IAS.

Onsite event, open to the public with mandatory registration.
Only in English.

Presentation

“Even if particular men have merit and that good intentions can afford us very beautiful and useful things, it is nonetheless true that they would do infinitely better, more, and quicker if there were lots of understanding and communication among them … A thousand things can be done by two or several people who understand each other which would never be done, or done well, if they work without communicating.” According to Leibniz’s 1692 Mémoire pour des personnes éclairées, communication, collaboration, and mutual understanding were essential requirements for a better advancement of scientific knowledge. This conference is concerned with the ways in which early modern scientific culture responded to that challenge. It focuses on the collective organisation of natural philosophy and a number of related disciplines, such as pure and mixed mathematics, anatomy, physiology and medicine, and natural history. It aims at understanding the collaborative practices and normative doctrines of collective knowledge acquisition underpinning the emerging networks and corporate structures of these disciplines.

Partners

- La République des Savoirs (UMR 8241, ENS-PSL)
- Institut d'Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités - IHRIM (UMR 5317, ENS de Lyon)
- La Maison Française d'Oxford (UAR 3129, Université d'Oxford)
- ERC NOTCOM "The Common Notion: Science and Consensus in the Seventeenth Century"

Program

Wednesday 12 March: Antichambre of the Paris IAS

10.15am - 10.30am: Welcome
Mogens Lærke (CNRS, MFO/IHRIM) and Sophie Roux (ENS-PSL)

10.30am - 11h30am: Historicising Social Epistemology: Marin Mersenne’s Mathematical Environment Revisited
Catherine Goldstein (CNRS, Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu - Paris Rive Gauche)

10.30am - 12pm: Break

12pm - 1pm: Mersenne, the Scientific Community, and the Laws of Friendship
Louis Rouquaryol (CNRS, IHRIM)

1pm - 2pm: Lunch

2pm - 3pm: Experimenters Disputing Even About Tastes: Pedagogy and the Productively Disputatious Culture of Early Modern Experimentalist Medicine
Evan Ragland (University of Notre-Dame)

3pm - 4pm: Our Mutual Friend: Building and Circulation of Common Knowledge through Hippocrates’ Aphorisms
Raphaële Andrault (CNRS, IHRIM)

4pm - 4.30pm: Break

Thursday 13 March: Antichambre of the Paris IAS

9.30am - 10.30am: Agricultural Knowledge and Collaborative Epistemology in the Early Royal Society
Niall Dilucia (CNRS, MFO)

10.30am -11am: Break

11am - 12pm: Natural Philosophy in French Periodicals: Communication, Form, Principles
Helena Taylor (University of Exeter)

12pm -1pm: Consensus, Collaboration and Communication: Scientific Societies in Early Modern France
Sophie Roux (ENS-PSL)

1pm - 2pm: Lunch

2pm - 3pm: The Communicative Construction of Science at the ‘Beijing Royal Academy of Astronomy’: Considerations on the Political Epistemology of Ferdinand Verbiest’s Astronomia Europaea (1687)
Pietro Daniel Omodeo (Ca' Foscari University of Venise)

3pm - 4pm: Leibniz, Leeuwenhoek and the Ideal of an International Academy of Mighty Microscopists (1715)
Erik Jorink Leiden (KNAW Amsterdam)

4pm - 4.30pm: Break

Friday 14 March: Salle des Actes (ENS) and Conference Room Cavaillès of the Réublique des Savoirs (from 3pm)

9.30am - 10.30am: Correspondence as a Testing Ground for New Astronomical Practices in the Early Modern Period
Isabelle Pantin (ENS-PSL)

10.30am - 11am: Break

11am - 12pm: Writing Philosophy in the Age of the Learned Journal: Leibniz and the Invention of the Journal Article
Daniel Garber (University of Princeton)

12pm -1pm: Conceivability, Communication, Collaboration. Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus on the Collective Practice of Knowledge
Mogens Lærke (CNRS, MFO/IHRIM)

1pm - 3pm: Lunch

3pm - 4.30pm: NOTCOM Advisory Board Meeting (Conference Room Cavaillès of the Réublique des Savoirs)