Last call - Deadline approaching - Summer School "Matter: Philosophy, Science and the Arts" University of Bologna Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies
ISHPSS
From: Antonella Tramacere <a.tra...@GMAIL.COM>
FEW SPOTS ARE STILL AVAILABLE
SUMMER SCHOOL 2022
MATTER
PHILOSOPHY
SCIENCE and
the ARTS
27-28-29 JUNE 2022
Registration deadline: 22 June
University of Bologna
Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies
Open to Students holding a bachelor,
Graduate students and PhD students
To register, send an e-mail to
What is matter? And how did it change over time? How have philosophers, scientists and artisans dealt with it in different periods and cultural settings? These questions will be at the core of the Summer School, which will involve experts from various fields to talk about matter and materiality from different perspectives. Philosophers, historians of science and technology, modern scientists will be asked to discuss how matter has been conceptualized over time -- from ancient philosophy, medicine and alchemy to contemporary cosmology and neuroscience -- as well as how it has been manipulated, transformed and shaped in mutual dialogue with the theories that tried to define it. Technologies shaped objects and bodies, created artefacts, led to the discovery of new materials, chemical elements and particles. Objects, bodies, and artefacts, on the other hand, encapsulate beliefs, mirror theories, merge habits of hands and ways of thinking about the world that surrounds us. This entangled history of ideas and objects, of theories and practices will be approached in a longue durée perspective, with particular attention to key case-studies taken from natural philosophy, cosmology, medicine and chemistry.
Students will be stimulated to critically think about matter, but they will also be asked to take matter in their hands, to think with their hands, to manipulate materials in accordance with instructions found in ancient manuscripts, to go through early modern books and museums and finally to taste matter, or at least a specific kind of matter, namely wine.
PROGRAMME
27 JUNE – 1st day: Matter of the Universe and the Mind
MORNING
9:30 Welcome and introduction
10.00-11:00 Ancient philosophy
Giulia Mingucci (Bergamo), Proximate matter and remote matter: Aristotle and the «two-body problem»
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30: – 12:30 Social neuroscience
Pier Francesco Ferrari (Paris), The material bases of the empathic mind
AFTERNOON
14:30 – 15:30 Physics and cosmology
Andrea Cimatti (Bologna), Luminous and dark matter in the universe
15:30 – 16:00 Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:00 Modern philosophy
Guido Gherardi (Bologna), No matter what they say: Mr. Berkeley, it's a matter of fact
28 JUNE – 2nd day: The Book and the Body
MORNING
9:30 – 10:30 Book culture
Roberto Limonta (Bologna), Volumen and Codex. A cultural paradigm shift between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 12:00 History of medicine
Paolo Savoia (Bologna), Early modern anatomies: Science, religion, gender, and the materiality of the body
AFTERNOON
14:00 – 16:00 Hands-on session: Tinkering
Sara Ricciardi, Stefano Rini, Fabrizia Villa (Bologna), Learning through artifacts: from children to scientists and back
Constructionist approaches claim that learning happens more efficiently if the learner is engaged in building an artifact: a virtual or physical object. With tinkering, a constructionist practice, the strong and personal interaction with matter, objects, and phenomena stimulates
deep and personal learning. When tinkering is social, a group of people works as a learning community: this makes the experience of the construction of knowledge possible while constructing a physical artifact.
This process also allows the learner to experience how the scientific community works, how knowledge emerges from different ideas, trials, and errors, and finally how the learning community itself can recognize temporary answers/knowledge. This idea of science and its
mechanisms is crucial to building true scientific citizenship. We will present a tinkering workshop where a kinetic sculpture of light will emerge from loose parts, scraps, light, translucent plastic, and reflective materials. We will also discuss the experience and the process that happened.
16:30 – 17:00 Guided tour
Paolo Cova (Bologna), Visit to the Anatomical Theater (Archiginnasio)
17:00 – 18:30 Library session
Franco Bacchelli (Bologna), Exploring rare books from the collection of the Archiginnasio
29 JUNE – 3rd day: Manipulating Matter
MORNING
9:30 – 10:30 History of science
Marco Beretta (Bologna), The alchemy of glass
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11.00 – 12:00 History of science
Matteo Martelli (Bologna), Alchemists at work: Ancient alchemy and its procedures
AFTERNOON
14:00 – 16:30 Hands-on session in the laboratory of the Department of Chemistry
Lucia Maini, Marianna Marchini (Bologna), Replicating ancient alchemical recipes in modern laboratories
Students will be guided to replicate the alchemical procedures recorded in ancient alchemical handbooks and used to turn metals into gold. The texts and recipes studied in the morning will be experimentally tested and replicated. Students will not simply test whether ancient recipes actually worked, thus trying to reconstruct what ancient alchemists did in their workshops. By re-doing techniques described in ancient texts and experiencing the transformations of the treated substances, we will also discuss the different ways in which chemical practices and natural substances can be described and classified on the basis of different theoretical assumptions.
17:00 – 19:00 Hands-on session at the ‘Vineria il Pollaio’
Matteo Cavalleri (Bologna), What is wine? The materiality of a cultural relationship
The seminar will address, both from a theoretical and an experiential point of view, some historical and cultural premises that structure the materiality inherent in the tasting of a glass of wine. After the seminar, students will be guided to taste a selection of wines (cost for the wine tasting: 25 Euros).
ORGANIZERS
Carlotta Capuccino, Matteo Martelli, Matteo Pasetti,
Paolo Savoia, Antonella Tramacere