About

Rodolfo Garau is a researcher specialising in the history of early modern philosophy and science, with a broader focus on early modern intellectual history. Prior to joining UTN in August 2025, he held postdoctoral appointments at several leading institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Hamburg. He also served as Assistant Professor (RTD-a) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is a member of the Executive Board of the International Society for Intellectual History.

Continental Empiricism: Rethinking Experience and Experiments in Early Modern Continental Philosophy and Science

Continental Empiricism: Rethinking Experience and Experiments in Early Modern Continental Philosophy and Science, which I curated with Arnaud Pelletier for Routledge, is finally in press! This book challenges one of the most entrenched narratives in the history of philosophy: the divide between empiricism and rationalism. Moving beyond this reductive framework, it explores how early modern thinkers across continental Europe conceived the relationship between experience and reason. Rather than treating empiricism as a purely British or anti-metaphysical doctrine, it uncovers a rich landscape of practices—experimental, observational, and epistemological—that shaped knowledge before Locke. By proposing the new category of “Continental Empiricism,” the volume offers a fresh historiographical map, inviting readers to rethink the origins, development, and meaning of empirical knowledge in early modern Europe

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

Journal Articles

• (with Pietro D. Omodeo) „Introduction: Arguing About the Stars on the Southern Side of the Confessional Divide.“ British Journal for the History of Science (published online 24/02/2025)
• „Astrology, Patronage, and Cultural Politics in 17th-Century Paris: The Case of J.-B. Morin.“ British Journal for the History of Science (published online 16/12/2024).
• „Evidence for Reattributing the Authorship of Anatomia ridiculi muris (1651) and Favilla ridiculi muris (1653) to Pierre Gassendi.“ Early Science and Medicine 29(4), (2024), 381-405.
• „Gassendi’s Second Thought. From a Materialistic Picture of Cognition to the Defence of Dualism: The Lasting Influence of the Polemic with Descartes.“ Notes and Records of the Royal Society 77 (2023), pp. 1-19.
• (with Giulia Rispoli and Pietro D. Omodeo). „Introduction“, in the special issue „Historical Geoanthropology“, edited by Pietro D. Omodeo, Rodolfo Garau, and Giulia Rispoli. Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 11:22 (2022).
• “Explaining Astrological Influence with Cartesian Natural Philosophy: Peter Megerlin’s Manuscript Astrologia Cartesiana (ASHB1530, circa 1680),” Early Science and Medicine 27(5) (2022), pp. 486-525.
• (with Doina C. Rusu), „Action at a Distance in Pre-Newtonian Natural Philosophy“, Early Science and Medicine 27(5) (2022), 397-402.
• „Who was the Founder of Empiricism After All? Gassendi and the ‘Logic’ of Bacon.“ Perspectives on Science 29:3 (2021), pp. 324-357.
• “Gassendi vs Astrology”, Lias. Journal of Early Modern Intellectual Culture and its Sources 47:2 (2021), pp. 143-174.
• “A törekvés (conatus) fogalmának felépítése Spinozánál.” Special issue ‘The Conatus in the Early Modern Period’. Orfeus Noster. Journal of Károli Gáspár University of The Reformed Church in Hungary, Faculty of Humanities, 12:2, (2020), pp. 11-35.
• Garau, Rodolfo. “Springs, Nitre, and Conatus. The Role of the Heart in Hobbes’s Physiology and Animal Locomotion.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 24:2 (2016), pp. 231-256.
• Garau, Rodolfo. “Late-Scholastic and Cartesian Conatus.” Intellectual History Review, 24:4 (2014), 479-494.

Articles in Edited Volumes

• „In Defense of “Empiricism:” Practical Knowledge and Epistemology. A Case Study on Pierre Gassendi „, in Garau, Rodolfo, and Arnaud Pelletier (eds). Empiricism in Early Modern Continental Philosophy and Science. Under Contract with Routledge. In press, 2026.
• „Between Theological and Scientific Controversies. Spinoza’s Reception of Descartes‘ First Law of Nature.“, in Cartesian Physics and Their Receptions: Intellectual and Institutional contexts. Under contract with Brill. Forthcoming 2026.
• “ An Eclectic Manqué? Gassendi and Brucker on Gassendi’s „Eclecticism“, in Eclecticism and Eclectic Philosophy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. by Sophie Roux and Tinca Prunea. Brill (forthcoming, 2026).
• “Gassendi’s Logic and Theory of Knowledge,” in Garber, Daniel, Delphine Bellis and Carla Rita Palmerino, Pierre Gassendi: Humanism, Science, and the Birth of Modern Philosophy, Routledge Studies in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (2023), pp. 215-240.
• “The Transformation of Final Causation: Telesio’s Theories of Self-Preservation and Motion,” in Omodeo, Pietro Daniel (ed). Bernardino Telesio, the Natural Sciences and Medicine in the Renaissance. Brill (2019), pp. 231-251.
• (co-authored with Pietro Omodeo) “Contingent Mathematics of Nature in the Renaissance: Cusanus’ Perspective.” in Wissensformen bei Nicolaus Cusanus, ed. C. Bacher and M. Vollet. Regensburg: Roderer (2019), pp. 125–139.
• “Descartes’ Physics in Le Monde and the Late-Scholastic Idea of Contingency,” in Garau, Rodolfo and Pietro Daniel Omodeo (eds.). Contingency and Order in Early Modern Science. Springer (2019), 199-218.
• (co-authored with Pietro Omodeo), “Introduction.” in Garau, Rodolfo and Pietro Daniel Omodeo (eds.). Contingency and Order in Early Modern Science. Springer (2019), 9-25.
• “Taming Epicurus. Gassendi. Charleton, and the Translation of Epicurus’ Natural Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century,” in Fransen, Sietske and Niall Hodson (eds.). Translation and the Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern Science. Brill (2017), pp. 231-257.

Books

• Rodolfo Garau and Pietro Omodeo (eds.) Contingency and Necessity in Early Modern Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Springer. (2019).
• Garau, Rodolfo, and Arnaud Pelletier (eds). Empiricism in Early Modern Continental Philosophy and Science. Routledge (2026, in press).
• Mihnea Dobre, Rodolfo Garau, and Pietro D. Omodeo (eds). Cartesian Physics and Their Receptions: Intellectual and Institutional contexts. Brill (2026, forthcoming).
• Rodolfo Garau. Conatus. History of a Early Modern Concept. Springer (under contract; forthcoming 2026).

Edition of Journal Special Issues

• “Action at a Distance in Pre-Newtonian Cosmology”, edited by Rodolfo Garau and Doina Cristina Rusu. Early Science and Medicine 27(5) (2022).
• „Historical Geoanthropology,“ edited by Pietro Omodeo, Rodolfo Garau, and Giulia Rispoli. Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 11(22) (2022).
• “Cultural Politics of Cosmology. Arguing about the Stars on the Southern Side of the Confessional Divide,” edited by Rodolfo Garau and Pietro D. Omodeo. British Journal for the History of Science 57(4), 2024.
• „Jean-Baptiste Morin: Mathematics, Philosophy, and Astrology.“ edited by Rodolfo Garau and Steven Vanden Broecke. Intellectual History Review. To appear in 2026.