ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Scientific Disputes, Cosmological Theories from Scheiner to Cassini: Archival Sources in the 17th Century 1

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

In the early modern period, many scholars conducted research in various disciplines, seeking to develop interpretive models for understanding the natural world while grappling with the Aristotelian tradition in natural philosophy and the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic tradition in astronomy. Those who belonged to religious orders also had to align themselves with the Thomist heritage, particularly within the Society of Jesus. New instruments, whose use spread rapidly in both Catholic and Protestant circles, as well as new observational practices, confronted scholars with interpretative challenges that were very complex and often gave rise to lively disputes.
This panel aims to explore these scientific disputes and controversies by focusing on a type of source that is sometimes neglected: manuscript archival materials and the correspondence exchanged among early modern mathematicians and astronomers. From the early 17th century, when the Jesuit C. Scheiner engaged in debates with his contemporaries, to the end of the century, when G.D. Cassini, and later his dynasty, established the importance of the Observatoire Royal in Paris, the analysis of unpublished documents can enrich studies based on printed works. In particular, correspondence between mathematicians and astronomers, together with other archival material, sheds light on their relationships, the nature of the disputes that arose among them, and their relations with the institutions to which they belonged.
A critical examination of letters, unpublished manuscripts, reports to academies, scientific societies or religious authorities, as well as observational notes and laboratory notebooks, reveals how these elements can enrich the historiographical picture and stimulate new directions of research. Comparing the analyzed documentation and the methodologies used by individual researchers or research teams will also prove illuminating.
(With the patronage of the Società Italiana degli Storici della Fisica e dell’Astronomia)

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Rebekah Higgitt, National Museums Scotland

Individual Presentations

• Christoph Scheiner and His Peers: Correspondence, Dissent, and Cosmological Debates in Early Seventeenth-Century Ingolstadt - Luís Carolino, ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, CIES

• Gian Domenico Cassini at the Observatoire Royal in Paris - Ivana Gambaro, University of Genoa, SISFA, Cassini 400 Committee

• Pendulum Length, Gravitational Variation, and the Shape of the Earth: Cassini’s Interpretation of Richer’s Observations - Marcella Brusa, University of Bologna (Italy); Luca Ciotti, University of Bologna (Italy); Elisabetta Rossi, University of Bologna and SISFA (Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy)

Session Organizers

• Ivana Gambaro, University of Genoa, SISFA, Cassini 400 Committee

• Valeria Zanini, National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), Astronomical Observatory of Padua, President of SISFA

• Luís Carolino, ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, CIES