{"id":4017,"date":"2018-05-15T17:44:26","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T17:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/?page_id=4017"},"modified":"2019-01-03T12:41:33","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T12:41:33","slug":"may-2018-jesuit-related-papers-at-scientiae-conference","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/?page_id=4017","title":{"rendered":"May 2018: Jesuit-Related Papers at Scientiae conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

The annual\u00a0Scientiae conference<\/a>, held this year at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, takes place from May 16-18, 2018. Keynote addresses for this conference dedicated to “disciplines of knowing in the early modern world” will be delivered by\u00a0Surekha Davies (Western Connecticut State University) and Vladimir Urbanek (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic).<\/p>\n

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More details about the conference are available online<\/strong><\/a>. Selected papers in the field of Jesuit Studies appear below.<\/p>\n

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\u2014\u00a0Panel: Interdisciplinary aspects of Athanasius Kircher\u2019s Encyclopaedia of Music Musurgia
\nUniversalis (1650)<\/p>\n

Even though the two-volume encyclopaedia of music Musurgia Universalis<\/em> by the German Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) appeared in Rome in 1650 (half a century into the baroque era), being as it is a compendium of theory and history of music, it draws heavily on the theories, practices and perspectives on music of previous periods, mainly the renaissance. So much so, that it might arguably be viewed as a summary these views on music during the late renaissance rather than of the early baroque, written at the end of that era and just after the conclusion of both the lives and oeuvre of the greatest exponents
\nof the style.<\/p>\n

The research group \u201cArtes y Modelos de Pensamiento\u201d (\u201cArts and Models of Thought\u201d) of the Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia) has been researching on the book since March
\n2016, and wishes to share with the international academic community a few of its findings so far. The papers presented will include:<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Johann F.W. Hasler<\/strong>, The research group \u201cArtes y Modelos de Pensamiento<\/em>\u201d of the Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia) and its research project on the appearances of musical notation in the Musurgia Universalis<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Juan Camilo Toro & Hasler<\/strong> (as co-author), \u201cProto-zoomusicology\u201d in the XVIIth century? Birdsong and other proposed \u2018musics of Nature\u2019 of both the Old and New Worlds, as reported in the Musurgia Universalis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0David Gaviria Piedrah\u00edta & Hasler<\/strong> (as coauthor), \u201cProto-ethnomusicology\u201d in the XVIIth century? Approaches to extra-European musics in the Musurgia Universalis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Susana G\u00f3mez Casta\u00f1o & Hasler<\/strong> (as coauthor), Early computer music in the XVIIth century? Automatic and randomly generated music in the Musurgia Universalis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\u2014\u00a0Elisa Frei<\/strong> (Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Boston College), \u201cHe studies Mathematics, because he heard it can be of use there\u201d: The motivations behind Jesuit petitions for Chinese missionary assignments (17th-18th centuries)<\/p>\n

The Society of Jesus\u2014established by Ignatius of Loyola and approved by Paul III in 1540\u2014was initially intended to engage in priestly evangelization and apostolic ministry. This apostolic work benefited from close relations with the Spanish and Portuguese empire, providing the crowns with capable and devoted missionaries and allowing Jesuits to travel to almost any corner of the world. The Eastern Indies were one of the Jesuits\u2019 most distant and exotic destinations. The motives behind these missionary vocations are found in the Litterae indipetae<\/em>, the voluntary petitions European Jesuits wrote to their leadership in Rome requesting assignments abroad. Members from the Italian provinces alone submitted more than 1,500 such letters between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. Competition for missionary assignments, especially in the Indies, was fierce, and the candidates employed multiple strategies in their indipetae<\/em>. As it has been extensively studied, Jesuits at China\u2019s Qing court were desired for their work as astronomers, scientists, cartographers, and translators. It was in stressing their mathematical proficiency that some indipeti<\/em> writers most sought to distance themselves from their rival applicants and to receive their superior\u2019s permission to be sent abroad. This paper aims to follow the careers of two Italian Jesuits asking for a Chinese assignment, who underlined their mathematical skills. We will see how the Roman Ludovico Gonzaga and the Sicilian Antonino Porzio had a similar approach but different results, because Mathematics was only one of the influential factors of a candidacy for the Eastern Indies.<\/p>\n

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\u2014\u00a0Svorad Zavarsk\u00fd<\/strong> (Slovak Academy of Sciences),\u00a0Observatio in the thought and practice of Martinus Szent-Ivany SJ (1633-1705)<\/p>\n

In his De scientiis in genere<\/em>, the Central European Jesuit polymath Martinus Szent-Ivany proposed his own version of the universal method of knowledge acquisition which, consisting of six parts or \u201csources\u201d, took its point of departure from the practice of observation. In this, his immediate model seems to have been his fellow Jesuit Sebasti\u00e1n Izquierdo who too considered observation to be the first \u201cinstrument of knowing\u201d (Pharus scientiarum<\/em>, Disp. 24). Szent-Ivany\u2019s works, non-theological and theological alike, provide us with ample material for exploring his use of the intellectual tool of observation: his Curiosiora et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea<\/em> (1689-1709) contain twenty \u201chundreds\u201d of observations (centuriae observationum<\/em>), of which those on plants are, interestingly, almost wholly excerpted from Francis Bacon\u2019s Sylva sylvarum<\/em>. Besides that, observationes<\/em> form part of many of his dissertations included in the Curiosiora miscellanea<\/em>, of which one, entitled Rectus modus interpretandi Scripturam Sacram<\/em> (1696), is an assemblage of more than five\u00a0hundred observations simply following one another. A case apart is Szent-Ivany\u2019s use of observation in his polemical theological treatises where it serves the purpose of defining the adversary and his strategies. Thus we can explore the character of Szent-Ivany\u2019s observation in a broad spectrum of texts and from different perspectives. Particularly intriguing will be to consider his intrumentalization of observatio<\/em> in relation to the other \u201csources\u201d of his method\u2014axioms, analysis, and analogy\u2014with which it often overlaps. Aiming to make a contribution to the understanding of the early modern notion of observatio<\/em>, this paper will examine Szent-Ivany\u2019s practice in the light of Izquierdo\u2019s elaborate theory.<\/p>\n

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\u2014\u00a0Francisco Malta Romeiras<\/strong> (Universidade de Lisboa),\u00a0Putting the Indexes into Practice: A Bibliographical Analysis of Prohibited Books
\nThe most elemental issues regarding the censorship of scientific books in Portugal have been overlooked in the past decades. By using an innovative bibliographical approach in the analysis of ca. 200 prohibited books of medicine, natural philosophy and natural history in the collections of the Portuguese National Library, this paper will shed some light into the differences between what was written in the Indexes of Forbidden Books and what was effectively put in to practice. This paper will also provide an original typology of censures that can be replicated in the study of other collections of expurgated books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual\u00a0Scientiae conference, held this year at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, takes place from May 16-18, 2018. Keynote addresses for this conference dedicated to “disciplines of knowing in the early modern world” will be delivered by\u00a0Surekha Davies (Western Connecticut State University) and Vladimir Urbanek (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic).   More details […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127185,"featured_media":4921,"parent":888,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-standard.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4017","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/127185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4017"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4262,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4017\/revisions\/4262"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/jesuitportal-recovery\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}