The purpose of EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination) is to provide a London forum for scholars working in the history of philosophy, intellectual history and the history of science of Europe in the period 1400-1650. The term 'philosophy' is interpreted in its fullest Renaissance sense, and includes such themes as: Neoplatonism, scholasticism and late Aristotelian philosophy, Epicureanism, stoicism, scepticism, cosmological theories, the classification of the disciplines, encyclopaedism, Lullism, the art of memory, the philosophy of mathematics, theories of the soul, theories of language and signs, etc.

All meetings: Saturdays, 2.00-4.00pm: Room G37, 1st Floor, Senate House south block: APART FROM *

Refreshments provided.

PLEASE NOTE: THESE SEMINARS ARE VERY POPULAR AND THE MEETING ROOM IS OFTEN VERY FULL.

PROGRAMME 2011-2012

22 October 2011
Manuel Mertens (University of Ghent): 'Giordano Bruno's Cantus Circaeus and demonic deception'

5 November 2011
Matthew Landrus (Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford): ' De re militari , military engineering, and Leonardo da Vinci'

10 December 2011
Italian Renaissance philosophy in the vernacular: Alessandro Piccolomini
Letizia Panizza (Royal Holloway, University of London): 'Alessandro Piccolomini: Aristotle's natural philosophy for the layman and woman in sixteenth-century Italy'
Eugenio Refini (University of Warwick): 'Logic, Rhetoric and Poetics as rational faculties in Alessandro Piccolomini's map of knowledge'

14 January 2012
Karin Ekholm (HPS, University of Cambridge): 'Timon's spade and the Queen of Hearts: medicine and anatomy in Nathaniel Highmore's emblematic title page'

11 February 2012
Peter J. Forshaw (University of Amsterdam): 'As Above, So Below: Medieval and Early Modern Conjunctions of Astrology and Alchemy'

* 10 March 2012: NB: ROOM G35
Mathematical Practitioners in Early Modern England
Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin (V&A): 'Mastering crafts: the mathematic text and artisanal epistemology in seventeenth-century England'
Stephen Johnston (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford): 'Confessions of a Mathematical Practitioner: Richard Norwood's Spiritual Autobiography'

14 April 2012
Current Research on Jan Baptista Van Helmont
Sietske Fransen (Warburg Institute): 'Jan Baptista van Helmont and the power of words'
Jo Hedesan (University of Exeter): 'Alchemy and Light Theory in the Work of Jan Baptista Van Helmont (1579-1644)'  

19 May 2012
Thomas Roebuck (Magdalen College, Oxford): ''Forms of Antiquarianism in the Early Royal Society'

2 June 2012
Medieval Arabic and Latin Alchemy
Stephanie Seavers (University College, London): 'Medieval alchemy and the symbolism of gold'
Gabriele Ferrario ( Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit , University of Cambridge): 'The pigment that came from overseas: Ultramarine blue in Medieval Arabic Alchemy'

For the most up-to-date information on the seminar please consult the seminar website:

http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/seminars/Emphasis/index.htm

To be added to the EMPHASIS e-mailing list, please contact the organiser: Dr Stephen Clucas: s.clucas@bbk.ac.uk

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