180034 VO-L The lodestone between medium and technology (2024S)

Apart from actively participating in the discussions of selected primary texts, students will be required to give a short talk and to write a ten page seminar paper in English on the primary text they have presented. Students who wish to participate in this course, therefore have to have a firm command both of spoken and written English as well as basic capacities to read Latin. Continuous presence at the seminar is another basic requirement. In their research, students will refer to the primary and secondary literature provided for the seminar as well as to other scholarly literature; in their essays, they will demonstrate their capacity handle the usual methods of scholarly documentation as required in the style sheet issued by the department of philosophy at the University of Vienna. A detailed structure for the paper will be presented at our first meeting.
2. Magnetism in idealist metaphysics and physics (Plato’s Ion and Timaeus),
3. Materialist atomism (Lucretius)
4. Tricky objects in a set of particular observations (Pliny),
5. Medical syntheses (Galen)
6. Christian theological speculation (Augustine).
7. Natural Magic and Renaissance Neoplatonism (Ficino)
8. Skepticism or Advancement of Learning Montaigne vs. Bacon
9. Setting Sails: the Earth-Magnetism of William Gilbert
9. New Cosmology Galileo‘s Lodestones
10 Magnetism in the New Science: Kepler, Newton
11. Epilogue: Mesmer’s magnetic medicine

Radl, Albert. 1988. Der Magnetstein in der Antike: Quellen und Zusammenhänge. Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag.
Sander Christoph, Magnes: Der Magnetstein und der Magnetismus in den Wissenschaften der Frühen Neuzeit. Leiden und Boston (Brill) 2020