Agenda

Workshop ERC EarlyModernCosmology and FARE EarlyGeoPraxis project

Interactive Online Seminar with mandatory registration

This workshop will focus on two resource groups: Water in urban and planetary
contexts and mineral and metallic resources in mining contexts. Presentations
will address the use of resources as well as their conceptualization as parts
of a “nature” redefined from the perspective of resource exploitation in the
early modern period. In terms of knowledge history, the workshop aims to
understand the assimilation process in relation to the respective contexts
and the respective resources. At the same time, this resource-related
knowledge will be placed in tension with a (post-)Copernican understanding
of planetary contexts and a planetary unity in the consideration of an early
modern construction of nature. Thus, human agency with respect to natural
processes and conditions is also included in a comprehensive dimension of the
workshop’s considerations. Water management and mining are forms of early
modern “geoengineering” and link resource management to planetary theories
of nature. Thus, these areas are early, effective and irreversible interventions
in nature, as described by the Anthropocene in the twentieth century with the
help of large-scale technology. Therefore, the workshop seeks to also trace the
idea of a Protoanthropocene that comprises aspects of practice, domination,
and epistemology in socio-natural environments.

Organizers:
Helge Wendt, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin / CRC ‘Episteme in Motion’, Freie Universität Berlin
Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage

For questions, the link of the event and registration, please contact:
Helge Wendt: hwendt@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
Pietro Daniel Omodeo: pietrodaniel.omodeo@unive.it

For the complete program, see the attached file