Thinking the Earth with the Body

• Department of History

Lecture by Dr Nuno Castel-Branco (Villa I Tatti), organised by the EUI History of Science and Medicine Working Group

In 1669, Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686) argued that the Earth has a history and that this history can be known through a series of rules today known as "Steno Principles of Stratigraphy." This presentation shows that Steno’s research on the Earth is intrinsically related to his anatomical studies of the body. Most accounts associate Steno’s turn to fossils and the Earth with the dissection of a great white shark for the Medici court in the fall of 1666 in Florence. Instead, I argue that Steno shifted his interests after reading an almost-hundred-year-old manuscript about fossils that directly contradicted his research methods. By reading Steno’s studies of the Earth in light of his anatomical writings and unpublished manuscripts, this talk problematizes the category of polymathy in early modern science. I also present early modern anatomy as a powerful discipline that influences other areas of knowledge, including a contribution to the idea of a world ordered by same natural laws.

Please register in order to get a seat or the ZOOM link.