The Weight of Things. Quantification of Matter and the Exchange of Technical and Learned Knowledge in Early Modern Europe.

• Applicant: Cesare Pastorino, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: History of Science ; Early Modern History
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 339935097

This project investigates the quantification of matter in the Early Modern period, focusing on the notion of specific gravity. At a given volume, different substances can be identified by their particular weight, or specific gravity. Numerous early modern experimentalists, including Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon and Johannes Kepler, viewed this seemingly humble principle as a fundamental key to the understanding of nature in general. Specific gravities were sought for a bewildering variety of materials, ranging from ivory, loadstone, and gold to ox horn, sheep blood or calves' brains. However, during the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century, this notion came to be crucial not only for natural philosophers and mathematicians. In fact, a heterogeneous group of early modern experts became interested in it, including instrument makers, antiquarians, humanists, alchemists, Jesuits and military engineers. This study will provide the first full investigation of this rich cultural and technical environment. It will analyze the contexts in which these experts used specific gravities and the knowledge transfer among them. It will provide new insight into how these groups of practitioners and scholars were connected.The project will focus on both discussions of specific gravities in learned works, and numerical determinations of specific gravities derived from texts, tables, and mathematical instruments. These data will be employed to study the determination, use, diffusion and transfer of knowledge on specific gravities across geographical areas, time periods and subject domains. In particular, this research will analyze mathematical instruments used in fields like the art of warfare and the goldsmith trade. These sources will permit the study of time periods and contexts for which textual sources are not available. This part of the project will be developed in collaboration with major European museums holding rich collections of historical instruments. The project will especially explore the relationship between applied and learned forms of knowledge, a crucial issue in the new historiography of early modern science. By redefining our understanding of the quantification of matter in the early modern period, this project will shed new light on the origins and development of experimental science in general, and open new perspectives for the discussion of the historical relation between humanities and sciences.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants