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

Refreshments provided.

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

PROGRAMME 2009-2010

3 October 2009
Practical Mathematics and the Military Gentleman
Steven Walton (University of Pennsylvania)

7 November 2008
Pomponazzi and the Rôle of Nature in Oracular Divination
Anthony Ossa-Richardson (Warburg Institute)

5 December 2009
Mediaeval alchemy
Jennifer Rampling (HPS, Cambridge) and Peter Jones (Kings College, Cambridge)

9 January 2010
New perspectives on Francis Bacon
Sophie Weeks, Cesare Pastorino and Kathryn Murphy

6 February 2010
Nature unbowels herself: Margaret Cavendish, print and the scientific imagination
Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (Oxford Brookes)

6 March 2010
Gravity and De gravitatione: The development of Newton's concept of action at a distance
John Henry (University of Edinburgh)

**NEW MEETING**
27 March 2010; Room STB3/6 Stewart House Basement
Renaissance Platonism, the lost Eurydice, and Orphic Song
Michael J. B. Allen (UCLA)


17 April 2010: CANCELLED

15 May 2010: Room G37 Senate House
Historians of Error: The Protestant Attack on Platonic Orientalism
Wouter Hanegraaff (University of Amsterdam)


**NEW MEETING**
29 May 2010: Room G37 Senate House
Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633): Artisan and Philosopher
Vera Keller (University of Southern California)


5 June 2010; Room G37 Senate House
Early Modern Heterodoxies
William Poole, Richard Serjeantson and Rhodri Lewis


Archive - 2008/9
Archive - 2007/8
Archive - 2006/7
Archive - 2005/6
Archive - 2004/5
Archive - 2003/4