Istituto per la Storia del Pensiero Filosofico e Scientifico Moderno

The Dutch history of the golden century, a formula which had effectively imposed this interpretative paradigm well beyond the seventeenth century, has been analysed in a more conscientious manner by more recent historiography. This has tempered the hagiographic reading and confirmed the fact that, in the second half of the century, the question of tolerance had become primarily a political conquest and a value shared by other nations. A supernational, European value, but which had also begun to cross the Atlantic several decades earlier. It is interesting to explore how writers facing each other across the two shores of the Channel, on one side observed and interpreted and on the other side presented themselves, offering to foreign eyes the concept of tolerance that had been consolidated in the Netherlands. In the appendix to the essay, besides sinignifcative images, is transcribed the rare and meaningful pamphlet titled ‘A LETTER from HOLLAND, touching Liberty of Conscience, &c.’

L'articolo propone un riassunto della critica testuale pubblicata fino ad oggi ed uno studio basilare dei testimoni superstiti dei Dialoghi d'amore di Leone Ebreo che si limitano soltanto al terzo dialogo per offrire delle conclusioni generali riguardo la genesi redazionale del testo e delle conclusioni sulla circolazione del testo prima della stampa dell'editio princeps a Roma nel 1535. Lo studio delle diverse redazioni appunta ad una progressiva toscanizzazione del testo e ad un allontanamento dai modelli fortemente latineggianti per la prosa filosofica della fine del Quattrocento ed inizio del Cinquecento. Questo rimaneggiamento del testo avrebbe avuto il suo momento culminante nell'intervento del curatore del testo, il senese Mariano Lenzi a Roma.

In this article we trace the scientific and cultural history of the astrolabe, a mechanical instrument used in the past for astronomical measurements and navigational purposes. The story of the astrolabe is interesting from several points of view, since it intertwines mathematical developments, geographical explorations, changing worldviews, and different cultures and civilizations. In our explorations we move from the early understanding of the world due to the Greeks, to the loss of their work, its rediscovery, the reception of Arab thinkers in Western natural philosophy, and, finally, to the new European culture that emerged with the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early Renaissance. We present a mathematical analysis of how the Celestial Sphere can be represented on the plane through the stereographic projection: this is the consequence of some geometrical results of Apollonius, together with later refinements, whose first traces appear in the work of Al-Farghani.

L’articolo analizza i programmi di storia della scuola italiana (scuola primaria, scuola secondaria inferiore - scuola media - e scuola secondaria superiore) nel corso della ultradecennale fase di riforme che si è conclusa nel 2012. In particolare vengono analizzati i temi dell’euro¬centrismo, della dimensione mondiale della storia e della sua funzione identitaria, nonché i contesti politico-culturali e storiografici che hanno determinato lo sviluppo dei vari programmi.

In this article we describe the invention of double-entry bookkeeping (or partita doppiaas it was called in Italian), as a fertile intersection between mathematics and early commerce. We focus our attention on this seemingly simple technique that requires only minimal mathematical expertise, but whose discovery is clearly the result of a mathematical way of thinking, in order to make a conceptual point about the role of mathematics as the humus from which disciplines as different as operations research, computer science, and data science have evolved.

Cette étude se propose d’insérer les œuvres de Vico dans l'environnement culturel dans lequel elles sont historiquement situées et de discerner au sein de ce contexte les éléments d’originalité de certains concepts vichiens. Parmi ces derniers, il faut citer en premier lieu la manière dont est abordée la question de l’ ingenium et son utilisation dans le langage et la théorie de la connaissance. Vico permet, à travers l'analyse de ces concepts, de penser avec davantage de force et à nouveaux frais les idées d’histoire et d'humanité en suivant le fil-conducteur de la connaissance poétique.

The aim of these initial notes is to focus on certain central aspects of John Locke’s thought through a conceptual prism that can cast light on new interpretational pathways. The idea is to accompany the reader through Locke’s intellectual evolution and the experiences connected with his sojourns in Europe: from his early education in London and at Oxford to his meeting with the First Earl of Shaftesbury, and the political and religious reflections that laid the foundations for the consolidation of his concept of tolerance, his political treatises and An Essay concerning Human Understanding. All his travels were pertinent to Locke’s intellectual development. Most of them took place on the Continent, where he encountered books, writers and living figures for the first time, or got to know them better. It was Locke’s frequentation of these geographical and cultural areas that made him not simply an English philosopher but an intellectual of the Republic of Letters, a thinker who read and wrote, studied and argued and, ultimately, belonged to Europe as a whole.

Cet article assume le cas français pour explorer les continuités et les mutations dans le fonctionnement de l’Inquisition romaine à la Restauration. La fermeture définitive des tribunaux inquisitoriaux hors des États pontificaux, y compris celui d’Avignon, n’empêche pas quelques ecclésiastiques français d’expérimenter les prisons du Saint-Office à Rome. Mais la présence de la Congrégation « suprême » dans l’espace français, qui anticipe le tournant intransigeant des années 1850, répond surtout au flux des instances en matière doctrinale et disciplinaire, suit des canaux multiples et souffre des révolutions politiques et des conflits internes à l’Église de France.

Le naufrage de l’humanité Riflessione a più voci sulle forme di deumanizzazione a partire da La zattera della Medusa di Théodore Géricault Apre il Quaderno Think Tank il testo del teatro-reading scritto da Rosario Diana e messo in scena a Napoli l’8 ottobre e il 10 novembre 2016, con la “zattera” progettata da Paolo Prota e i pannelli elaborati dalla sua Scuola come scenografia. Nel narrare le vicende dei naufraghi de La Méduse (1816), questo lavoro pone l’accento sulla disgregazione dell’umano nelle condizioni estreme in cui la vita è messa a repentaglio. Si prosegue poi con il saggio di Alessandro Stile, che richiama l’attenzione sulla specificità dei linguaggi artistici utilizzati nello “spettacolo” (pittura, musica, parola, immagini). Si arriva quindi al contributo di Manuela Sanna che tematizza il passaggio dal quadro al teatro-reading, avviando una riflessione filosofica in compagnia di Foucault, Nancy e Callois. Si continua poi con lo scritto di Maurizio Cambi, che, reinterpretando in maniera originale la letteratura utopistica moderna, individua due forme fondamentali di egoismo: quella dal basso (i naufraghi della zattera) e quella dall’alto (gli abitanti delle città utopistiche). Si arriva, quindi, a Valeria Chiore, che, con una serie di epifanie letterarie corredate da immagini eloquenti, tesse un reticolo ingegnoso dell’estremo fra Géricault, Poe e Lautréamont. Segue Roberto Evangelista, che, dopo aver esaminato il tema dello stato di natura nei filosofi dell’età moderna, conclude che i naufraghi della zattera ricordano i «bestioni» vichiani, tanto distanti dalle nostre regole: anch’essi, infatti, sono tutto un fascio di nervi, di istinto, di passioni e di fantasia. Muovendo dalle parole di Cristo («gli uomini vollero piuttosto le tenebre che la luce») riportate nel Vangelo di Giovanni, il contributo di Dario Giugliano mette in luce il nesso profondo fra amore, verità, luce e sofferenza: legame che spiega come mai gli uomini – al pari dei naufraghi della zattera –, volendo fuggire il dolore, scelgano sempre il buio piuttosto che la luce. Infine, Paolo Prota racconta la gestazione progettuale della zattera e ne mette in evidenza l’aspetto misterioso, plurifunzionale e polisemantico: oggetto da vivere e sperimentare in piazza, centro d’interesse scenografico nel momento della rappresentazione teatrale.

À partir de 1775 l’ex jésuite J.-B. Fiard (1736-1818) dénonce dans ses écrits l’existence en France d’une secte de sorciers. De son obsession d’un complot des « démonolâtres » contre la religion il trouve confirmation, à la fin du siècle, dans les prodiges de Mesmer et des somnambules magnétiques, comme dans les événements de la Révolution. Son affirmation, apparemment inactuelle à son époque, de la réalité de la sorcellerie se situe dans le contexte d’une branche « démoniaque » de l’interprétation de la Révolution comme complot antireligieuse branche qui continuera de croître sous la Restauration ; elle fait aussi ressortir la continuité entre les lectures eschatologiques de l’histoire suscitées par la suppression de la Compagnie de Jésus et par la période révolutionnaire.

Les contemporains de Droysen ont été les premiers à percevoir une empreinte aristotélicienne dans l’œuvre de Johann Gustav Droysen (1809-1884). Le témoignage le plus ancien remonte à Heinrich Leo, qui en 1867 écrivait au sujet du Précis de théorie de l’histoire : « Ce petit livre se base essentiellement sur un fondement aristotélicien ». En 1878, dans le cadre d’une ébauche biographique de Droysen, Alfred Dove fait remonter l’approfondissement d’Aristote à la période où Droysen travaillait su...

This study is intended to follow up and illustrate the theoretical steps through which G.B. Vico defined the concept of “Consciousness” (coscienza) in the works that preceded his masterpiece, the Scienza Nuova . The theme of consciousness is elaborated by the Neapolitan philosopher in a very different way from Descartes’s proposals, since it comes out by approaching verum to facere and, later, verum to conformari . This displacement occurs by means of a theoretical passage through the level of conscire , outlining a deep gap between feeling ( sentire ) and imagining ( immaginare ). Vico works on a possible definition of the concept of “consciousness” and moves a tight critique to skeptic and neostoic currents posing the question about how to became able to feel something while striving to imagine in a conscious way. The whole anthropological framework which allows the definition of the human is built on this theoretical passage and on the etymologic reconstruction of conscire as cum-scire and of conscientia as a part of scientia . Keywords: consciousness; imagination; G. Vico; science

Prenant son point de départ dans un titre d’un rapport du civiliste Pugliatti sur la propriété et les propriétés, l’article propose avec l’emploi du pluriel de relativiser la conception absolutiste de la propriété qui a triomphé au xixe siècle. L’expérience médiévale est celle d’un autre rapport de l’homme aux choses, fondé sur la possession et l’exploitation de la terre, et conduisant à envisager une pluralité de propriétés sur le même bien. Apparue au Haut Moyen Âge cette superposition de propriétés a été théorisée, avec la redécouverte des compilations de Justinien, à travers la notion de domaine utile et la théorie du domaine divisé. Bien que reposant sur une contradiction dans les termes mêmes de dominium utile, cette construction des juristes s’est ancrée dans les mentalités pendant des siècles. Trouvant ses origines dans les réflexions des théologiens et des philosophes depuis le xive siècle, la nouvelle conception anthropologique du rapport du sujet aux choses a donné naissance à l’individualisme possessif et à la propriété ‘moderne’.

The paper deals with the transformation of sensation concept throughout modern thinking. A particularr focus is laid on the transition of sensation from the external – the body and his surface – into the inside – the depth and darkness of human consciousness. If “nothing but a body can touch and be touched” (Lucretius, De rerum natura , I, 304), it is namely in the passivity, in the stance of “being touched”, that sensation forces a passage towards the inside, the mind, the soul, and modifies it. Modern philosophy changes the way of thinking this passage, in accordance with a new concept of subject and consciousness, and with a renewed approach to the mind-body connection. Focus of the paper are the theories of Malebranche and Condillac, as, notwithstanding the basic difference of their argumentative stance, they both propose a new path for this transition. Both Malebranche, by twisting from within meaning and extent of Cartesian dualism, and Condillac, pursuing Lockean anti-innatism, acknowledge the fundamental passivity of the sentient subject. The pervasive power ascribed to sensation is instrumental in engendering a new enlarged representation of the inner space of consciousness. Keywords: sensation; passivity; inside/outside; modifications of the soul

NeST is a digital platform for publishing and managing SSH digital editions, both critical and diplomatic, fully aligned with the FAIR principles. It has been developed in Italy in the context of the H2IOSC initiative by Net7 for the Institute for the History of Philosophy and Science in the Modern Age (ISPF) of CNR, both members of the Italian node of OPERAS. Funded through the Next Generation EU programme, H2IOSC is an Italian infrastructural project to create advanced services for researchers in the Humanities, Heritage, and Social Sciences disciplines. NeST is a web platform where researchers can collect heterogeneous materials and use integrated tools to build a digital edition. NeST provides a complete and easy-to-use workflow, starting from the management of the sources, both textual and visual. It facilitates text entry and editing in user-friendly ways, via a WYSIWYG interface, maintaining at the same time full compliance with XML-TEI, a widely adopted standard in terms of text encoding. Texts already available in XML-TEI can be directly imported into the researcher workspace. Similarly to text management, the platform also supports text digitization. In this case, the reference standard is IIIF, which not only optimizes image delivery and standardizes descriptive metadata, but also enables the organization of individual reproductions into ordered sequences through the IIIF manifest (manifest.json). Such organization, based on unique identifiers, enables the creation of reference systems between the pages encoded in XML-TEI and the corresponding images. NeST supports both the import of existing IIIF manifests and the easy creation of new ones through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for uploading images of scanned texts. The configuration of the digital edition presentation is the final step, in which the researcher defines the possible visualizations of the materials collected so far. Depending on how the resources have been prepared and linked, the outputs of the digital edition may include facsimile with facing text, text with critical apparatus, or multiple parallel texts. In addition, the XML-TEI transcriptions and the newly created IIIF manifests can be annexed to the digital edition. The platform, accessible at https://nest.cnr.it/, has been tested by creating the scholarly digital edition of the “Scienza nuova” of the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico. The “Scienza nuova” is a work that has three different editions: the first of 1725, the edition of 1730 and, finally, that of 1744. The last two editions present a rather similar layout, albeit with different variants, and can be easily aligned, a peculiarity that made Vico an excellent case study for piloting NeST. NeST is now available to researchers who need to create complete digital editions in a simple and effective way. The use of standards such as XML-TEI and IIIF ensures interoperability and the long-term reusability of research outputs. The NeST front-end integrates a powerful text search engine, making resources easily findable and accessible. Finally, each digital edition can be assigned a DOI, making NeST a FAIR-savvy tool for modern, sustainable, born-digital SSH research.

Introducción al volumen especial.

NeST is a digital platform for publishing and managing SSH digital editions, both critical and diplomatic, fully aligned with the FAIR principles. It has been developed in Italy in the context of the H2IOSC initiative by Net7 for the Institute for the History of Philosophy and Science in the Modern Age (ISPF) of CNR, both members of the Italian node of OPERAS. Funded through the Next Generation EU programme, H2IOSC is an Italian infrastructural project to create advanced services for researchers in the Humanities, Heritage, and Social Sciences disciplines. NeST is a web platform where researchers can collect heterogeneous materials and use integrated tools to build a digital edition. NeST provides a complete and easy-to-use workflow, starting from the management of the sources, both textual and visual. It facilitates text entry and editing in user-friendly ways, via a WYSIWYG interface, maintaining at the same time full compliance with XML-TEI, a widely adopted standard in terms of text encoding. Texts already available in XML-TEI can be directly imported into the researcher workspace. Similarly to text management, the platform also supports text digitization. In this case, the reference standard is IIIF, which not only optimizes image delivery and standardizes descriptive metadata, but also enables the organization of individual reproductions into ordered sequences through the IIIF manifest (manifest.json). Such organization, based on unique identifiers, enables the creation of reference systems between the pages encoded in XML-TEI and the corresponding images. NeST supports both the import of existing IIIF manifests and the easy creation of new ones through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for uploading images of scanned texts. The configuration of the digital edition presentation is the final step, in which the researcher defines the possible visualizations of the materials collected so far. Depending on how the resources have been prepared and linked, the outputs of the digital edition may include facsimile with facing text, text with critical apparatus, or multiple parallel texts. In addition, the XML-TEI transcriptions and the newly created IIIF manifests can be annexed to the digital edition. The platform, accessible at https://nest.cnr.it/, has been tested by creating the scholarly digital edition of the “Scienza nuova” of the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico. The “Scienza nuova” is a work that has three different editions: the first of 1725, the edition of 1730 and, finally, that of 1744. The last two editions present a rather similar layout, albeit with different variants, and can be easily aligned, a peculiarity that made Vico an excellent case study for piloting NeST. NeST is now available to researchers who need to create complete digital editions in a simple and effective way. The use of standards such as XML-TEI and IIIF ensures interoperability and the long-term reusability of research outputs. The NeST front-end integrates a powerful text search engine, making resources easily findable and accessible. Finally, each digital edition can be assigned a DOI, making NeST a FAIR-savvy tool for modern, sustainable, born-digital SSH research.

Elena Gagliasso, Federico Morganti, Alessandra Passariello (a c. di), Percorsi evolutivi. Lezioni di Filosofia della biologia, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2016 Nicole Dalia Cilia, Luca Tonetti (a c. di), Wired Bodies. New Perspectives on the Machine-Organism Analogy, CNR Edizioni, Roma, 2017

The paper deals with the transformation of sensation concept throughout modern thinking. A particularr focus is laid on the transition of sensation from the external – the body and his surface – into the inside – the depth and darkness of human consciousness. If “nothing but a body can touch and be touched” (Lucretius, De rerum natura , I, 304), it is namely in the passivity, in the stance of “being touched”, that sensation forces a passage towards the inside, the mind, the soul, and modifies it. Modern philosophy changes the way of thinking this passage, in accordance with a new concept of subject and consciousness, and with a renewed approach to the mind-body connection. Focus of the paper are the theories of Malebranche and Condillac, as, notwithstanding the basic difference of their argumentative stance, they both propose a new path for this transition. Both Malebranche, by twisting from within meaning and extent of Cartesian dualism, and Condillac, pursuing Lockean anti-innatism, acknowledge the fundamental passivity of the sentient subject. The pervasive power ascribed to sensation is instrumental in engendering a new enlarged representation of the inner space of consciousness. Keywords: sensation; passivity; inside/outside; modifications of the soul

Il contributo recensisce il volume di Angela Di Fazio Tra crisi e riscatto. Elsa Morante legge Ernesto De Martino , Pendragon, Bologna, 2017, pp.236