Vegetative Powers: Endowing Bodily Life from Late Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period - 12-13/09/20
The conference aims at analysing the various attempts to deal with the bodily activities traditionally attributed to vegetative powers—nutrition, generation, sleep, and metabolism—that served for the understanding and definition of life. Vegetative powers are a key topic for any comprehension of living bodies and definition of life: to vegetate is a crucial way to define life in bodies. Traditionally attributed to either natural spirit or the vegetative soul, vegetative activities regulated the development and maintenance of life and, thus, served to differentiate between inert and living bodies. Such operations endowed living beings with basic activities and characterized the most basic soul-body relationship common to all living beings.
FECHA/DATE/DATA:12-13/09/2018
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: Palazzo del Bo - Ex-Istituto Anatomica Patologica (Padova, Italy)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Fabrizio Baldassarri; Andreas Blank; Fabio Zampieri
INFO: web - fabrizio.baldassarri@gmail.com
INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE:
PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:
Wednesday 12 September:
Location – Aula Archivio Antico, Palazzo del Bo
09.15 – Registration 09.30 – Welcome Address from Authorities of the University of Padua “The Heart in the History of the University of Padua”, Gaetano Thiene
Session1 – The Vegetative Soul in Antiquity: Aristotle and Galen 10.00 – “Soul, Parts of Soul, and Vegetation in Aristotle” – Klaus Corcilius(Berkeley University) 10.30 – “ὁμοίωσις φυτῷ in Galen: how our most fundamental capacities are plant-like” – Robert Vinkesteijn (Utrecht University)
11.00 – Coffee Break
Session2 – Scholastic Tradition, Renaissance Culture, and Chymical Knowledge
11.30 – “How to Explain Vegetative Powers of an Immaterial Soul?” – Martin Klein (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) 12.00 – “Expanding the Parva Naturalia-Project: Albertus Magnus on Nutrition” – Roberto Lo Presti (Humboldt University Berlin) 12.30 – “Jesuit Vegetative Souls: Lessious and the Conimbricenses on men’s ‘lowest’ functions” – Cristiano Casalini (Boston University)
13.00 – Lunch Break
14.00 – “Towards the Elimination of the Anima Vegetativa: Some Intellectualistic Tendencies in the Jesuits Suárez and Arriaga” – Anna Tropia (Humboldt University Berlin) 14.30 – “Nicolas Taurellus on Forms, Vegetative Souls and the Question of Emergence” – Andreas Blank (Alpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt) 15.00 – “Generation and the Vegetative Soul: A ‘Hermetic’ Perspective from Marburg (1612)” – Elisabeth Moreau (Université Libre de Bruxelles/Radboud University Nijmegen)
15.30 – Coffee Break
Session3 – Early Modern Philosophical Investigations of the Vegetative Soul 16.00 – “Concoction, Transmutation, and Living Spirits: Francis Bacon’s Experiments with Artifical Life” – Dana Jalobeanu (Bucharest University) 16.30 – “The Vegetative Functions of the Soul in Descartes’ Meditationesand the ordo rationis” – Igor Agostini (Università del Salento) 17.00 – “Marin Cureau de la Chambre’s Conception of the Vegetative Soul” – Balint Kekedi (Aberdeen University)
20.00 – Dinner
Thursday 13 September:
Location: Aula Cagnetto (or Anfiteatro Morgagni), ex-Istituto di Anatomia Patologica
Session4 – Cartesianisms 09.00 – “The First Editions of L’Homme: Cartesian Scholars and the Vegetative Soul” – Fabrizio Baldassarri (HAB Wolfenbüttel/ Università di Padova) 09.30 – “Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz and the Question of the Negation of the Vegetative Soul in his Cartesian Manuscripts” – Emanuela Orlando(Università del Salento)
Session5 – English Philosophy 10.00 – “Re-Inventing the Vegetable Soul? More’s Spirit of Nature and Cudworth’s Plastic Nature Reconsidered” – Sarah Hutton (University of York)
10.30 – Coffee Break
11.00 – “Plants and Brains: The Vegetative Soul and Its Links with the Imagination in Early Modern Medicine and Philosophy” – Guido Giglioni(Università di Macerata) 11.30 – “Margaret Cavendish on Vegetable Life” – Justin Begley (Helsinki University)
Session6 – 17th-Century Medical and Philosophical Interconnections 12.00 – “Vegetative Epistemology: the Cognitive Principles of Life in William Harvey and Francis Glisson” – Daniel Schmal (Pázmány Péter Catholic University) 12.30 – “An Alternative to the Vegetative Soul: Galen’s Natural Spirit in the Late 17th-Century Medical Conception of Digestive Functions” – Fabio Zampieri (Università di Padova)
13.00 – Lunch Break
14.00 – “A Way to Atheism? Pierre Bayle on Plastic Life” – Martine Pécharman (CNRS – Paris)
Session7 – 18th-Century: The Resurgence of the Vegetative Soul 15.00 – “The Notion of Vegetative Soul in the Leibniz-Stahl Controversy” – François Duchesneau (Université de Montreal)
15.30 – Coffee Break
16.00 – “Newton’s ‘Vegetative Spirit’” – Kirsten Walsh (Exeter University) 16.30 – “Beyond Structure: Vegetative Powers from Wolff to Hanov” – Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)
20.00 – Dinner