The incomparable historian

Program

9.00 Welcome Vittorio Carrara, Head of the Central University Library
9.15 Introductory Remarks - Stefano Gattei, University of Trento

Session one -  Chair: Matthias Dörries, Université de Starsbourg
9.30 Luca Ciancio, University of Verona
“In fibris corporis planetae: Johannes Kepler and the Fabric of the Earth”
Abstract
In his Astronomia nova (1609) and in the Epitome astronomiae copernicanae (1618-21) Johannes Kepler speculated on the existence of filaments, fibres and shells in the body of the planets and described their possible arrangements in a series of illustrations. Some of his sources will be examined in order to show the impact of medical and natural historical literature on his attempt to sketch a theory of the Earth compatible with his physical astronomy.
 

10.15 Stefano Gattei, University of Trento
“The institutionalization of science: John Heilbron’s longstanding work on the role
of scientific Academies in Europe”
Abstract
Drawing on John Heilbron’s work on European scientific academies, this paper
traces how their traditional functions were taken over by universities, professional societies and
publishers from the nineteenth century onward. These functions were honouring, researching,
publishing, representing, advising and international exchange. The paper argues that academies
can renew their purpose by leading on research ethics, funding high-risk research, being clear
about what scientific advice can and cannot do and using the history of science to improve science
education.

11.00 Nick Wilding, Georgia State University
“Source Jenga: Misattribution, Forgery and Visual Epistemology”
Abstract
Galileo’s contributions to natural philosophy have increasingly been understood
alongside fields such as literature, music and, most importantly, the visual arts. One site from
which the most influential iteration of this trend, known as visual epistemology, emerged, is Erwin
Panofsky’s foundational essay “Galileo as a Critic of the Arts” (1954), which positioned Galileo's
aesthetics at the centre of his scientific world. Looking afresh at the two core Galilean documents
upon which Panofsky’s argument rests (a letter to a painter, and the Considerations on Tasso),
however, leads to some inconvenient conclusions. Using a wide array of evidence, from codicology
to AI stylometry, I hope to demonstrate that these are respectively an early forgery and a late
misattribution. How and why should we remove primary sources, and what happens to canonical
secondary studies when we do so?

12:00 – 14:30 | Lunch Break

Session two - Chair: Luca Ciancio
14.30 Giuliano Pancaldi, University of Bologna
“‘The education of protoplasm’, or: The many facets of agency in the life sciences
around 1900”
Abstract
Harry Marshall Ward (1854–1906), Cambridge professor of botany and a leading
figure in British science around 1900, claimed that a process he called “the education of
protoplasm” could be observed occasionally both in nature and in the physiology laboratory. Ward
considered the process fully compatible with Darwin’s science. Ward died prematurely in 1906, and
his career reached only briefly into the Mendelian era. His works, however, reveal a cross-
disciplinary area that has rarely been explored when interpreting the life sciences at the time of the
Mendelian revolution. In his works Ward drew on botany, plant physiology and pathology,
bacteriology, agricultural science and breeding, fermentation, as well as immunology and
vaccination studies. In this paper Ward’s notion of “the education of protoplasm” will be linked to
the notion of an agency of life which has resurfaced time and again in biology since the times of
Lamarck.

15.15 Matthias Dörries, University of Strasbourg
“John L. Heilbron, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and the History of Science”
Abstract
John L. Heilbron’s work in the history of science echoes in surprising ways the
artistic work of the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. Heilbron’s delight in including
culture and art in the history of the physical sciences is mirrored in Sugimoto’s openness towards
science.

6:00 – 16:30 | Coffee Break

Session three - Chair: Giuliano Pancaldi
16.30 Daniel Kevles, Yale University
“Money and Whiskey: The Technologies of Detection, Oversight, and Regulation”
Abstract
John Heilbron surprised historians of science and technology by finding innovations
in seemingly improbable places – perhaps most famously in the Roman Catholic churches of
Europe that were configured to serve as astronomical observatories and used heliocentric models to
calculate the calendar-determining motions of the planets. In a similar spirit, I propose here to
show that beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, in the United States and likely elsewhere,
government began fostering the development of new knowledge and technologies because of its
rising commitment to regulating the marketplace of the emerging industrial economy. It placed
special emphasis on policing frauds and cheats in the arenas of the paper currency and of the
taxation of distilled spirits. I will close with some suggestions on how in the many decades since,
the huge expansion in the regulatory role of government has fostered a rich array of new knowledge
and technologies that is worthy of historians’ attention.

17.15 Peter Westwick, University of Southern California
“The roots of high-tech California”
Abstract
As a native son of California, John Heilbron wrote insightfully about the connections
between nuclear science and radio electronics and hydropower in the Golden State. This talk
extends his approach to consider connections across a range of high-tech enterprises in California.
In the process it will help explain how California became the 4th largest economy in the world, at various times a world leader in mining, agriculture, oil, hydropower, aviation and aerospace,
entertainment, biotech, and electronics and computing.