Nova Scientia. Early Modern Scientific Literature and Latin

Project Information

NOSCEMUS

Grant agreement ID: 741374

DOI

10.3030/741374

Project closed

EC signature date 13 June 2017

Start date 1 October 2017

End date 31 March 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 421 223,75

EU contribution

€ 2 421 223,75

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAET INNSBRUCK
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - NOSCEMUS (Nova Scientia. Early Modern Scientific Literature and Latin)

Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2023-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Fundamental changes occurred in the study of nature between the late 15th and 18th centuries, leading to the emergence of modern natural science. This process would have been impossible without Latin as the scientific lingua franca of the era. This crucial role of Latin is insufficiently acknowledged. The innumerable scientific texts written in Latin have remained neglected. This severely limits the scope of research into the history of early modern science and thereby restricts our understanding of a crucial part of our past.

To mend these shortcomings, the project has advanced our understanding of the interrelation of Latin and science in early modern times and established the respective literature as an interdisciplinary research field. This has been accomplished (a) by examining and classifying its formal variety and range of content, and (b) by analyzing its function as a medium of communication within and beyond the scientific community.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The team, composed of one PI (Martin Korenjak), four scientific collaborators (Ovanes Akopyan, Dominik Berrens, Johanna Luggin, Irina Tautschnig), one IT expert (Stefan Zathammer), and one mathematician (Florian Baumgartner), has worked steadily towards the proposed goals over the whole project duration. Most time and energy have been devoted to two closely interlinked fields, namely (1) the collective elaboration of a database of early modern scientific literature, and (2) the design and elaboration of five monographs dealing with different aspects of this literature. These two fields will be briefly described first, followed by (3) the elaboration of a novel OCR tool that has been applied to the texts in the database.

(1) A database of the Semantic MediaWiki type has been set up which holds a representative selection of early modern works on natural scientific subjects written in Latin. It has been conceived as a working tool for the team members and as a means of dissemination at the same time. In the first capacity, it was collectively elaborated by all team members, whose individual work was based on its contents in turn. In the second capacity, the database has been made freely accessible at https://wiki.uibk.ac.at/noscemus/Main_Page. Representativeness has been achieved by the subdivision of the field along the categories of scientific discipline, literary genre, and historical era. Works corresponding to every combination of these categories have been looked for and entered into the database. For each work, an entry has been created which consists of a short but telling description accompanied by all relevant bibliographical data. A link to a copy already available online has been provided in order to give users the possibility to inspect the original for themselves. A semantic drilldown makes it possible to search for any combination of categories (e.g. all botanical dialogues from the 16th century). Searches by author, place, and printer are possible as well. Now, at the end of the project, the database contains 994 entries.

(2) Five monographs have been designed by the PI Korenjak and the four scientific collaborators Akopyan, Berrens, Luggin and Tautschnig.
The monograph written by Korenjak, titled Latin Scientific Literature, 1450–1850, provides the first overview ever of the field of early modern scientific literature in Latin. It consists of an introductory part, devoted to the scientific, linguistic, literary and media background of early modern scientific literature, and a main part, in which the single literary genres of this literature are described in detail. The monograph has appeared in 2023 with Oxford University Press in the series ‘Oxford-Warburg Studies’.
The four monographs written by the scientific collaborators focus on four key functions of Latin in the context of early modern science: naming; description and explanation; persuasion; and publicizing science. In each case, it has proved reasonable to focus on one particular subset of Neo-Latin scientific texts in order to keep the respective book at a manageable size. In the ‘naming’ monograph (written by Berrens), this subset is works from natural history; in the ‘description and explanation’ monograph (Akopyan), texts dealing with natural disasters; in the ‘persuasion’ monograph (Luggin), longer treatises discussing major contested issues; in the ‘publicizing’ monograph (Tautschnig), poetic texts. The book by Berrens, titled Naming New Things and Concepts in Early Modern Science. The Case of Natural History has been finished and successfully submitted as a habilitation thesis at the University of Innsbruck in 2022. In 2023, it has been submitted to Cambridge University Press for publication, where it is currently under review. The book by Akopyan, titled Explaining Natural Disasters in Early Modern Europe: Politics, Science, and Rhetoric, is near completion, has been contracted with John Hopkins University Press and is due to appear in 2024. The book by Luggin is still work in progress due to two maternity leaves. The book by Tautschnig, titled Moving the Earth in Song. The Reception of Copernicus in Latin and Greek Poems, has been finished and successfully submitted as a PhD thesis at the University of Innsbruck in 2023. It is about to be submitted to Cambridge University Press for publication.

(3) In order to transcribe the Latin texts presented in the database, the OCR tool ‘Noscemus GM 6’ has been developed. This tool is based on the OCR software ‘Transkribus’ but is specifically geared to the transcription of early modern printed Latin texts. All works in the database have been transcribed, made machine-readable, and searchable with the help of this tool. It is available for free at https://readcoop.eu/model/print-latin-texts-15-th-19th-htr/.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project has progressed beyond the state of the art in three respects:

(1) It has provided the first overview ever of the early modern scientific literature written in Latin through the database and Korenjak’s monograph mentioned in the previous section. For the first time, researchers now have the possibility to orient themselves in the field, which has thereby been established as an area of research in its own right.

(2) It has proven the importance of the early modern scientific literature written in Latin for the Scientific Revolution by analyzing the four fundamental functions of said literature, namely naming new objects and notions, describing and explaining them, arguing for certain positions and publicizing new insights.

(3) The OCR tool ‘Noscemus GM 6’ not only renders printed scientific works in Latin machine-readable, thereby greatly facilitating their further analysis, but also works for all early modern printed texts in Latin script, regardless of their language, as well as for Greek texts. It thereby constitutes an important instrument in the toolbox of any digital humanist interested in the early modern period.

The project's emblem: a book under the microscope.