The arts of experimenting between practices and forms of writing:
The case of experientia literata
Faculty of Philosophy
University of Bucharest
6-7 December 2012
Organizer: Dana Jalobeanu
Organizing and program committee:
Mihnea Dobre, Sandra Dragomir, Claudia Dumitru, Sebastian Mateiescu, Cesare Pastorino
This is an interdisciplinary workshop organized in the framework of the project From natural history to science (CNCS grant PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0719, contract no. 294/05/10/2011). Its purpose is to bring together students of early modern forms of experimentation and arts of discovery (such as Francis Bacon’s experientia literata and interpretatio naturae, Hooke’s philosophical algebra and different other forms of ‘inductive reasoning’, methodological reflections etc.). One set of questions we will address in our two-day workshop regards the context, formation and evolution of Francis Bacon’s art of experimenting, experientia literata. Another set of questions regards the reception and transmission of Baconian methodology of experimentation in the second part of the seventeenth century.
The workshop will bring together researchers coming from different fields of early modern studies, such as natural history, natural philosophy, history of early modern ideas, history of dialectics, history of medicine, and history of philosophy. We have tried to limit the number of papers and give plenty of time for discussions. For this purpose, each day will end with a round-up discussion destined to recapitulate the questions of the day, sharpen and elaborate topics of further research etc.
Invited speakers and participants (in alphabetical order): Daniel Andersson (University of Oxford), Sorana Corneanu (University of Bucharest, Romania), Iovan Drehe (Babes Bolyai University Cluj Napoca, Romania), Mihnea Dobre (University of Bucharest), Claudia Dumitru (University of Bucharest), Laura Georgescu (Ghent University, Belgium), Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest), James Lancaster (The Warburg Institute, University of London), Cathay Liu (Yale-NUS College, Singapore), Oana Matei (Western University Vasile Goldis Arad, Romania), Sebastian Mateiescu (University of Bucharest), Cesare Pastorino (University of Sussex, UK), Richard Serjeantson (Cambridge University, UK).
Programme:
Thursday 6th December
09:00-09:30 Opening addresses, coffee and cookies
09:30-10:30 Cesare Pastorino (University of Sussex), Francis Bacon’s Early Formulations of Experientia Literata
10:30-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-12:00 Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest), Bacon’s Mature Form of Experientia Literata and Its Practical Uses
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:00 Iovan Drehe (Babes Bolyai University, Cluj), Rhetoric and the Baconian Experientia Literata
14.00-15.00 Sebastian Mateiescu (University of Bucharest), Francis Bacon on Potential Heat
15.00-15.30 Coffee Break
15:30-17.00 Round-up discussion: Bacon and Experiment
17.00-17.30 Tea, cookies
17.30-18.30 Invited talk: Daniel Andersson (University of Oxford), The Early Reception of Descartes in Hungary: A New Manuscript.
19:00 Dinner
Friday 7th December
09:00-09:30 Coffee and cookies
09:30-10:30 Richard Serjeantson (Cambridge University), Francis Willughby and the New Philosophy in Mid-Seventeenth Century England
10:30-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-12:00 Oana Matei (Western University Vasile Goldis Arad, Romania), Vegetable Philosophy: John Evelyn’s Technologies of Amelioration
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:00 Claudia Dumitru (University of Bucharest), Robert Hooke’s “Baconian Method”: Memory and Natural History
14:00-14:30 Coffee Break
14:30-15:30 Laura Georgescu (Ghent University), Processes of Experimentation: Gilbert’s
Investigation of Magnetic Motions
15:30-17:30 Round-up discussion: Forms of Experimentation in Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy