Yearly Archives

A paper on the history of mechanics in the Middle Ages, co-authored by Henrik Lagerlund and Sylvain Roudaut, has been published in Aeon. The paper, which arose out of an ongoing edition of some of Blasius of Parma’s Questions of the Physics having to do with mechanical problems, presents the intricate history of this discipline during the Middle Ages and the evolution of its status.

One of the intriguing aspects of this story is that, despite laying the foundations of modern physics, and having envisioned quite varied practical applications of theoretical mechanics, most medieval thinkers named this discipline the ‘science of weights’ and did not suspect until the 16th century that they were doing what is called ‘mechanics’.

Two PhD positions in medieval and Renaissance logic and philosophy,
embedded in Graziana Ciola’s ERC Starting Grant Project, are open for application at Radboud University (Nijmegen). The deadline for applications is on the 14^th of May. More informations may be found here:

Position 1: https://www.ru.nl/en/working-at/job-opportunities/phd-candidate-in-the-history-of-philosophy-medieval-logic-and-semantics

Position 2: https://www.ru.nl/en/working-at/job-opportunities/phd-candidate-in-the-history-of-philosophy-medieval-and-renaissance-philosophy

This Thursday and Friday, March 23 and 24, there will be an online conference called “What Can the Will Do?”. The topic is the will, from a plethora of perspectives, and the time frame is the 13th to the 16th centuries.

For details, program and registration, go here.

In the last session, on Friday at 5 pm, one of the participants of this project, Erik Åkerlund, will give a presentation on “Powers and Limitations of Civil Governance in Suárez”.