2017/05/12 駒場科学史講演会：Calculus & Newtonianism in early modern Italy
日時：2017年5月12日（金曜日）14:00-
場所：東京大学駒場キャンパス14号館3階308号室
講演者：Daniele Macuglia (シカゴ大学)
タイトル：Calculus & Newtonianism in early modern Italy: The case of Rome and the Veneto scholars, 1689-1712
This talk will focus on the way in which Italian civilization made its way, scientifically and mathematically, from the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment. More specifically, I will delve into the activities of scholarly communities in Rome and the Veneto area, focusing on the way calculus and Newtonianism transformed—and were transformed by—practices of synthetic geometry, the Galilean heritage, and Catholic scholasticism. My thesis is that, unlike what happened with the Galileo Affair and notwithstanding the general prohibitions on Copernicanism, some major contributions to the spread of Newtonianism in Enlightened Italy came from within the Church itself. Not only that, Newtonianism ended up reactivating Italian intellectual life, giving it new energy after an overall economic and cultural decline in the second half of the seventeenth century.
