The Losers of the Scientific Revolution.
The Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy was established in 2001 by Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest), Vlad Alexandrescu (University of Bucharest) and Dan Garber (Princeton University). For the next two decades, we met every summer in the mountains of Transylvania and the seminar evolved into an institution, with a reputation for both academic rigor and cordiality. In recent years, we were co-sponsored by the Philosophy Department at Princeton, the Institute for Research in the Humanities (ICUB) at the University of Bucharest, Hamburg Institute of Advanced Studies and the University of Technology, Nuremberg.
From 2025, the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy is moving to Nuremberg. University of Technology Nuremberg has joined in as a permanent partner. This year’s theme is “The Losers of the Scientific Revolution”. The seminar is also announced via an official Facebook event, where participants can connect and stay updated.
Date: June 30 – July 4, 2025.
Location: University of Technology Nuremberg
Organizers: Dana Jalobeanu (UTN / University of Bucharest), Daniel Garber (Princeton University), Rodolfo Garau (University of Hamburg).
Program
Monday, June 30
Location: Ulmenstraße 52i, seminar room 31
9.30 – 10.00 Opening remarks (Gyburg Uhlmann, Dana Jalobeanu)
10.00 – 11.10 Inaugural lecture, Daniel Garber, Roads Not Taken.
11.10 – 11.30 Coffee break.
11.30 – 13.30 Reading group 1, Joseph Glanvill on Reason and Religion (Paul Lodge and Henry Straughan)
13.30 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 15.10 Ilary Virtanen, Robert Fludd and Early Modern Science.
15.10 – 15.50 Mattia Mantovani, Descartes the Egyptian.
15.50 – 16.20 Coffee Break.
16.30 – 18.30 Round table and open discussion: One big loser of the Scientific Revolution: Humanism (Dana Jalobeanu, Daniel Garber, Rodolfo Garau).
Tuesday, July 1
Location: Ulmenstraße 52i, seminar room 31
9.30 – 10.30 Invited lecture, Gideon Manning, Losing Description: Henry Powers, Robert Hooke and Early Modern Microscopy.
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee break.
11.00 – 13.00 Reading group 2, Natural magic and the scientific revolution. A reading group on Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Magia naturalis (Dana Jalobeanu, Donato Verardi, and Shen Chen)
13.00 – 13.50 Lunch
13.50 – 14.30 Alexandru Liciu, Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel as historian of the earth – a loser of the Scientific Revolution?
14.30 – 15.30 Invited talk, Oana Matei, Resurrection from ashes: discussions on the possibility and impossibility of palingenesis (of plants) in the 17th century
Wednesday, July 2
Location: Cube One, Conference room, Dr.-Luise-Herzberg-Straße 4, 90461 Nürnberg – Mark the change of location!]
9.30 – 10.30 Invited lecture, Gyburg Uhlmann, Symbolic Mathematics: Vieta, Platonic Arithmetics, and Stoic Language Theory
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee break.
11.00 – 13.00 Reading Group 3. Astrology: One of the Main “Losers” of the Scientific Revolution? (Rodolfo Garau, Steven Vanden Broecke).
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
14.00 – 14.40 Michael Veldman, “They lost to phlogiston?!” Early modern elemental and mechanical theories of fire.
14.40 – 15.20 Ovidiu Babes, Greene against Locke’s Primary and Secondary Qualities.
15.20 – 15.50 Coffee break
15.50 – 16.30 Scott Harkema, Galileo and the Infinite Force of Percussion.
16.30 – 17.10 Ciprian Alexandru, Harvey vs. Harvey. Losing Blood by Circulation.
17.10 – 17.30 Break
17.30 – 19.30 Discussion/Debate: Leviathan and the Air Pump 40 years later (organized by Claudia Dumitru).
Thursday, July 3
Location: Cube One, Conference room
9.30 – 10.30 Invited lecture: Rodolfo Garau, Winning the Battle but Losing the War? The Peculiar Case of Gassendi.
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee break
11.00 – 13.00 Reading Group 4, The War Between Vitalism and Mechanism in the Seventeenth Century: Who Was the Loser? The Case Study of the Debate Between Henry More and Robert Boyle (Daniel Garber).
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
14.00 – 14.40 William Eaton, New Studies in Cartesian Physics: Holes, Shadows, and Boundaries.
14.40 – 15.20 Zach Ottati, Francis Bacon’s Matter Theory: From Atomism to Vitalism.
15.20 – 15.40 Coffee break
15.40 – 16.20 Costel Cristian, Epicurean Model of Atomic Motions in the Context of Modern Natural Philosophy.
16.20 – 17.00 Luca Nahorniac, The Space-Time Structure Of Leibniz’s Monadic World.
17.00 – 17.20 Break
17.20 – 18.30 Invited lecture, Scott Mandelbrote (University of Cambridge), ‘Sir John Finch among the philosophers’
18.30 – 20.00 Discussion – debate: Who was the biggest loser of the seventeenth century?
Friday,July 4
Location: Cube One, Conference room
9.30 – 10.30 Invited talk, Mihnea Dobre, Searching for Losers of the Scientific Revolution: The First Modern Physicist.
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee Break
11.00 – 11.40 Laura Georgescu, Digby on Universal, Objective Similarity and Objective Classification.
11.40 – 12.20 Benjamin Goldberg, Losing the Battle, But Winning the War? Nicholas Culpeper and the Struggle to Reform English Medicine.
12.20- 14.30 Lunch & round-table debate: Scientific Revolution or Scientific Reformation? What Historiographic Categories Are We Left With?
Sightseeing: Doku-Center (Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds)