European Networks and the New Sciences in Edinburgh

Project Information

ENNSE

Grant agreement ID: 892528

DOI

10.3030/892528

Project closed

EC signature date 12 March 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 183 473,28

EU contribution

€ 183 473,28

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENNSE (European Networks and the New Sciences in Edinburgh)

Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2022-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project's aim was to delineate the untold story of how educational culture from the Venetian Republic and its cultural
hinterland established the foundations of post-Aristotelian scientific culture in Edinburgh in the 17th century. This account lay hidden behind hierarchical official accounts
(with outward conformity to local national and confessional standards), which significantly distorted the de facto reality of institutional responses to the progress of the new sciences
in formal education in Europe.The researcher discovered that an unpublished manuscript commentary on natural philosophy, astronomy,
and mathematics written by the largely unknown writer and academic Adam King was the
foundational text for instruction in those subjects from the early to mid 17th century at what
would become the centre of Britain's Enlightenment culture, the University of Edinburgh. The
text betrays an intimate familiarity with the ideas of key individuals (Paduan professors and
their students) and the formal teaching approaches of scholars (Cesalpino, Galileo and Clavius among others) who
operated across scholarly networks from northern Europe to the Venetian Republic. The
project promised a detailed intellectual study that would trace the genealogy of institutional
engagement at Edinburgh with the mechanical observational astronomy, Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy,
and proto-empirical scientific methods contained in the Edinburgh manuscript (and the
student dictates and Theses spread over 50 years that quote it verbatim) back to their sources.
It would offer a detailed textual account of the use educationalists made of networked educational
texts as a hypertextual entry point for the new sciences in the academy in the wake of the
collapse of Aristotelian cosmology. In addition to the text-based case study and philosophical
survey contained therein, the project promised to provide a biographical (of key players) account that
highlighted how this process of knowledge exchange was enabled by the concerted actions of
a network of specific scholars from across Europe. In sum, through this process, the project aimed to offer a detailed and wide-ranging
account of how non-hierarchical cosmopolitan educational networks embedded key aspects of the new sciences
within formal education.Through project publications, including critical editions of key texts, narrative biographical accounts, and detailed philosophical surveys,
the overall objectives were met.

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

Despite the challenges presented by library and archive closure for the full duration of the project, the project has
successfully realised its goals. The early stage of the project was devoted to the form and critical analysis of the
Edinburgh disputation literature. The time was also used to translate a large section of the Edinburgh lecture
notes in which commentaries constituted a significant part of the educational focus. The Theses-edition process revealed the proportionally and qualitatively significant presence of
several unanticipated commentators on Aristotle and Ptolemy, namely, Andrea Cesalpino and Gerolamo Cardano.
The project published a devoted study of Cesalpino, which brought into sharp focus the nature of the role Aristotelian commentaries
played in explaining to students key changes in philosophical and scientific conjecture in the late 16th Century. The
same is true of the commentaries of Cardano on Ptolemy, which the project explored in May 2022 at the "Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576). New Perspectives on a Master of Intellectual Variety'
conference at the University of Venice. Cardano in this context was presented to students as an exemplar of good
observational science across several different disciplines and across two generations in the 17th century. This work will be published in a volume on Cardano.
The project developed more work on the commentary tradition's role in disseminating this information during the network part of the project. Here the link between Galileo's
work and that of Kepler was established through the personal network of the Edinburgh regents. The physical
network links between individuals that facilitated knowledge exchange was uncovered within the archive in Padua.
Matriculation records and national student records were consulted to reveal new and
undiscovered links between Edinburgh reformers, their lecture notes from Edinburgh and key networked members across Venice and its own hinterland.
This necessitated a significant translation of material relating to Galileo and Kepler contained in the Edinburgh manuscript notes. This research data was developed at
the 'Supernovae, Comets, and Aristotelian Cosmology', conference held at Venice in June 2022.The conference proved a success and its papers have been collated and the conference proceedings are now under
contract with Brepols (see below).
The project has produced a narrative account of these connections, their philosophical significance, and their institutional impact
within a monograph that is now being formatted for submission to Edizioni Ca'Foscari, the gold-standard Early
Modern publishing series for open access publication. The project work was showcased at the Ca'Foscari/Padua 2022 International Conference on 'Cosmopolitanism and Scientific Culture in Early Modernity',
co-organised by the researcher with Pietro D.Omodeo and Matteo Cosci.

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 critical edition of the Edinburgh Theses published by Bloomsbury offers a significant development in both scholarly understanding of the reach of the new sciences in Europe's peripheries (Edinburgh),
but also the nature of the methods understood as carriers of that information. The edition offers an account that contains granular details of the types of philosophical and scientific material passed across
borders, and a provisional network map of cosmopolitan scholars who facilitated it. The researcher's work in the edited volume on Andrea Cesalpino (Baldassarri and Martin Eds.) adds philosophical detail to the
intellectual network, which highlights how educationalists across Europe engaged with each others work. This article not only adds to our understanding of how a prominent Paduan professor responded to the challenges (and produce some of his own)
to Aristotelian cosmology, it also shows the coherence of the understanding of scholars across Europe to the slow and steady erosion of a very significant philosophical paradigm. The researcher's work on Comets (Venice 2022 'Supernovae, Comets and Aristotelian Cosmology' conference) and the volume produced as part of this will definitively establish the role played by institutions in this process. The researcher's article in this volume presents an account rooted in the student thesis, but
with cross-reference with the educational network's reformers' manuscript work, that emphasises the significant role of specifically alienated (confessionally) cosmopolitan scholarly communities, unencumbered by confessional considerations, in the
institutional normalisation of the marginalisation of metaphysics and Aristotelian cosmology. The monograph produced by the project will offer the University of Edinburgh a ground-breaking new understanding of the history of
its institution in the lead up to the late 17th century and its development as a leading intellectual European centre of learning.

Palazzo Bo