Historical Geoanthropology in Venice Pietro Daniel Omodeo; Sebastiano Trevisani
Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas,
01/2023, Letnik:
11, Številka:
22
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This essay deals with the natural-artificial reality of the lagoon of Venice, as a paradigmatic case that can contribute to an understanding of the broad cultural dimension of the Anthropocene. ...Indeed, we here deal with the low amplitude background signal of anthropogenic geomorphological and geoenvironmental agency. This should not be confused with the stratigraphic meaning of Anthropocene, since geologists are working towards the validation of the Anthropocene hypothesis by detecting specific markers which, from our perspective, correspond to high-intensity signal peaks at a geochemical level. Our geo-anthropological case, the geomorphology of Venice, has particular historical and symbolic relevance. Its environment has been transformed by humans and the elements over millennia to such an extent that it is impossible to neatly separate human agency from natural causes. We here discuss the entanglement of environmental factors, socio-economic drivers, and cultural-political elements of Venice as a paradigm of geo-anthropological processes in general. Keywords: Historical Geoanthropology, Anthropocene, Venice, Water Science
This opinion paper discusses some of the challenges and opportunities that earth scientists face today in connection with environmental problems. It focuses on aspects that are related to the role of ...geocomputational approaches and new technologies for geoenvironmental analysis in the context of sustainable development. The paper also points out a “data imbalance” effect, a key issue in the analysis of environmental evolution and of geosphere-anthroposphere interactions in the long-term. In connection with this, it stresses the importance of geoenvironmental information which can be derived from environmental humanities and related disciplines, such as history and archeology. In this context, the complexities and potentialities of a dialogue between earth sciences and the humanities are outlined.
This book offers a new reconstruction of Amerigo Vespucci’s navigational and scientific endeavours in their historical context. The author argues that all of the manuscripts or texts that Vespucci ...left to posterity are reliable and true, except for several amendments imposed upon him for reasons linked to the political and economic interests of those who authorised him to undertake his journeys or which were the result of relationships with his companions. The earliest genuine documentation, which dates from the late fifteenth century or early sixteenth century, confirms this position. Fortunately, careful philological studies of Vespucci’s principal written works are available, while some of his original drawings, which confirm, clarify and enrich what he narrated in his letters, can be identified in Waldseemüller’s large map known as Universalis cosmographia (1507).
This paper is devoted to Laurentius Eichstadt, a Baltic astronomer of the generation between Tycho and Hevelius. As a calendar-maker, Eichstadt used and tested the astronomical tables and the ...planetary theories of his elder contemporaries, Longomontanus and Kepler; as a town physician and gymnasium professor, he taught mathematics and astronomy alongside medicine and natural philosophy in Stettin and Gdańsk. Eichstadt’s indefatigable engagement with theory, practice, and teaching is marked by his continuous reassessment, adjustment, and revision of views in astronomy, physics, and metaphysics, aimed at bringing these fields in better agreement with each other and with empirical observation. Eichstadt’s critical attitude did not prevent him from remaining committed to his scholastic legacy. As a matter of fact, his creative reworking and teaching of astronomy and philosophy bear witness to the long vitality of the northern European scientific tradition rooted in Melanchthonian literacy and Aristotelian philosophy. The work and conceptions of this participant in the astronomical debates of the early seventeenth century offers us an insight into the complex interplay of technical astronomy and metaphysical discourse in a time of transition from a geometrical approach to planetary theory resting on Aristotelian metaphysics to a post-Keplerian physical–mathematical science unifying heavens and earth.
This contribution interprets the intertwined issues of science, epistemology, society, and politics in Gramsci’s
as a culturalist approach to science that does not renounce objectivity. Gramsci ...particularly criticized the scientist positions taken by the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin in
(1921) and the conference communication he delivered at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology in London in 1931. Gramsci did not avoid, at least implicitly, engaging with the theses of Lenin’s
(1909). Gramsci’s reception of these Russian positions was twofold: on the one hand, he agreed with the centrality of praxis (and politics) for a correct assessment of the meaning of epistemological positions; on the other hand, he disagreed with the reduction of the problem of epistemology to the dichotomy of materialism and idealism at the expense of any consideration of the ideological dimension of science.
This volume explores the entwinement of science and philosophy in the conceptions of the Renaissance thinker Bernardino Telesio. His vistas are considered from an interdisciplinary perspective ...bringing together the histories of philosophy, physics, astronomy, meteorology, medicine, and psychology.
Geopraxis Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas,
01/2023, Letnik:
11, Številka:
22
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This essay deals with the most urgent political-epistemological question in the Anthropocene debate, namely the identification of the subject of the ongoing planetary transformation. It presents ...philosophical perspectives, concepts and historiographical approaches that can help bring into focus humans’ transformative action. It proposes geopraxis as a viable concept, which connects the geological agency of today’s societies with the political problem of collective action, in line with the Gramscian concept of praxis. A historical and open conception of humanity, as a de-essentialized process of decision-taking and self-determination, is here defended as the theoretical basis for geoanthropology, as the emergent cross-disciplinary Anthropocene paradigm. Keywords: Anthropocene Paradigm, Geopraxis, Humanistic Geoanthropology, Historical Epistemology, Political Epistemology of Environmental Humanities, Cosmopoiesis, Cosmotechnics, Cosmopolitics
This collective volume in the history of early-modern science and medicine investigates the transfer of knowledge between Germany and Scotland focusing on the Scottish mathematician and physician ...Duncan Liddel of Aberdeen.
A comprehensive survey of how scientific disciplines have always been informed by politics and ideology on the basis of the Gramscian views in historical materialism, hegemony and civil society.
The Senegal Delta and Global Capitalism Omodeo, Pietro Daniel
Monthly review (New York. 1949),
02/2024, Letnik:
75, Številka:
9
Journal Article, Magazine Article
Recenzirano
As Pietro Daniel Omodeo observes in this review, "environmental politics cannot be separated from political decision-making." Using the example of the Senegal delta, as explored in Maura Benegiamo's ...La terra dentro il capitale, Omodeo shows that the neocolonial "Great Expropriation of the global commons" is underway in the Global South, with grim ecological and social consequences for those living in the delta.
PDF
