CALL FOR PAPERS

Intersections - Yearbook for Early Modern Studies (Brill: Leiden and
Boston)

General Editor: Karl Enenkel

Intersections brings together new material on well considered themes within
the wide area of Early Modern Studies. Contributions may come from any of
the disciplines within the humanities: history, art history, literary
history, book history, church history, social history, history of the
humanities, of the theatre, of cultural life and institutions. The themes
are carefully selected on the basis of a number of criteria, the most
important of which are that they should address issues about which there is
a lively and ongoing debate within the international community of scholars
and that they should be of interest to a variety of disciplines.

Call for Papers for Volume 11:

Philosophies of Technology: Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries

Francis Bacon and the Baconian sciences contributed to European sciences
and philosophy by successfully suggesting and propagating experiments and
controlled observations as fundamental for empirical research. Historical
studies have focussed on clockworks, vacuum pumps and automata, but there
is a wealth of other technical models used and experimented with in the
Leonardo- and Bacon- inspired philosophical communities that calls for a
revision of an assumed clear-cut mechanistic paradigm. We invite articles
in addition to those emerging from papers to be read and discussed on
occasion of the International Conference \"Philosophies of Technology:
Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries \"(Frankfurt am Main, July 7/8, 2006).
Essay topics might include:

1. The impact of technical models for structuring knowledge production in
natural philosophy, natural history and the philosophy of history

Technical innovations - actual or envisioned - call for and make possible
new world views. They generate the urge for a revision of traditional
assumptions and at the same time they offer explanations. How did technical
models serve as explanatory models for the world at large? What were the
implications of using them in this way? What technical models (apart from
clockworks, vacuum pumps and automata) were debated as explanatory models
in Early Modern scientific discourse (thermo- or hydrodynamic models such
as the oven, distillation apparatusses, mills, looms, paper producing
machines, printing machines, mining technology)? What was the impact of
technical innovations on the debate about nature, arts and techne? What was
the role of technical innovations in magical theory and practice? And what
is their impact on new concepts of history and progress?

2. Technical developments in the Renaissance and Early Modernity In
particular, contributions are encouraged that contextualize the
epistemological problems and raise the following questions: In which
regions did the technical inventions occur and in what economic/ political
sphere) Was there an exchange of innovations throughout different European
regions? Which contacts can we observe between European regions and between
regional centres and their peripheries? What were the effects of
colonialism? How and why were techical innovations either supported or
resisted and by whom?
Bacon advocated a scientific ideal inspired by cooperation in the service
of the commonwealth, which, however, did not include \"the public\" as
controlling the technical know how. Was this a Baconian idea or does it
indicate the general limitations of his time in regard to restrictions
regulating the access to and command of technical and scientific
knowledge?

The volume is scheduled to appear in 2008.

Proposals, about 300 words, should be sent (preferably electronically) no
later than May 30th 2006 to one of the following email addresses:
Claus Zittel, c.zittelem.uni-frankfurt.de
Gisela Engel, G.Engelem.uni-frankfurt.de
Nicole C. Karafyllis, karafyllisem.uni-frankfurt.de
Romano Nanni, r.nannicomune.vinci.fi.it

The authors of the proposals that have been accepted will be invited to
write a paper before November 15th 2006. The final decision on the
acceptance of any paper will be made by the editors following receipt of
the complete text.