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10Introduction: Quis dixit? The Vicissitudes of Authority in Early Modern CosmologyPerspectives on Science 30 (5): 819-825. 2022.Naturae vero rerum vis atque majestas in omnibus momentis fide caret, si quis modo partes ejus ac non totam coplectatur animo.1In the De natura deorum, Cicero recalls that followers of Pythagoras often justified justified their acceptance of a statement by appealing to the authority of their teacher. For them, inasmuch as Pythagoras “himself said it,” his words should be accepted unreservedly and there was no reason to argue further.2 Since antiquity, “ipse dixit” has been considered the most st…Read more
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16Discussing Tides Before and After Newton: Roger Joseph Boscovich’s De aestu marisPerspectives on Science 30 (6): 1042-1064. 2022.The causes of tidal motions were widely debated from antiquity up to the eighteenth century. These discussions got a second wind in the early modern period, in the wake of a growing number of cosmological alternatives that challenged the dominant Aristotelian-Ptolemaic stance. The 1687 publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica was a defining moment in the discussions and consequently made universal gravitation the most credible and generally accepted explanation. This paper investigate…Read more
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4After the flood. Imagining the global environment in early modern Europe: by Lydia Barnett, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019, xi+264 pp., $49.95 (hardcover), ISBN: 9781421429519 (review)Annals of Science 78 (1): 126-128. 2021.
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8Fate and Fortune in European Thought, ca. 1400–1650 (edited book)BRILL. 2021.This collection of essays presents new insights into what shaped and constituted the Renaissance and early modern views of fate and fortune. It argues that these ideas were emblematic of a more fundamental argument about the self, society, and the universe and shows that their influence was more widespread, both geographically and thematically, than hitherto assumed.
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10After the flood. Imagining the global environment in early modern EuropeAnnals of Science 78 (1): 126-128. 2021.
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7An account of the astrological controversies that arose in Renaissance Italy in the wake of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s _Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem_, published in 1496.
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5Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529–1597): new perspectives on a Renaissance philosopherIntellectual History Review 29 (4): 541-543. 2019.
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1In search of a spiritus: Francesco Patrizi on tidesIntellectual History Review 29 (4): 655-668. 2019.In the Pancosmia, the fourth book of his Nova de universis philosophia (first published in 1591 in Ferrara; second edition in 1593 in Venice),1 Francesco Patrizi devoted six chapters to the questio...
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8Gerrit Jasper Schenk , Historical Disaster Experiences: Towards a Comparative and Transcultural History of Disasters across Asia and Europe. Cham: Springer, 2017. Pp. ix + 436. ISBN 978-3-3194-9162-2. $139.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 52 (2): 374-375. 2019.