Workshop: Jean-Baptiste Morin (1583-1656). Astrology and the New Science in the 17th Century

Workshop organized by Steven Vanden Broecke and Rudi Garau.

Registration via https://event.ugent.be/registration/Morin from 27-12-2022 11:58 until18-01-2023 18:00

This international workshop brings together almost everyone currently working on one of the most overlooked intellectuals of 17th-century France: the mathematician-astrologer Jean-Baptiste Morin (1583-1656). In spite of his extraordinary astrological productions, such as the posthumously published Astrologia Gallica (1661), and in spite of his social proximity and intellectual conversancy with the more well-known representatives of a new philosophy and science (e.g. Descartes, Gassendi), historians have found it exceedingly difficult to write Morin into the story of 17th-century scientific culture. Whenever historians have mentioned him at all, they seem to have done so in either of two ways. Either Morin is mentioned despite his astrology, or he comes forth as a tragic character, fast marginalized due to his astrological interests and (supposed) psychological idiosyncracies. This workshop seeks to change this perception by breaking new ground in the study of Morin’s relation to French philosophical and scientific culture of the second quarter of the 17th century.

Venue: The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium (RASAB)

Date and time: Thursday 19 January 2023, 8:30 am-5.30 pm

Provisional program:

08:30-08:50 Arrival

08:50-09:00 Welcome 

09:00-09:50 Aurélien Ruellet (Université du Maine, Le Mans / Laboratoire TEMOS), Les marges documentaires d’un savant en marge: Jean-Baptiste Morin et les traces manuscrites d’une carrière savante. 

09:50-10:40 Daniel Garber (Princeton), Confronting the New Philosophy: Jean-Baptiste Morin’s reactions to Descartes.

10:40-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-11:50, Chantal Grell (Université de Versailles), Jean-Baptiste Morin et Louise-Marie de Gonzague.

11:50-12:40 Dalia Deias (EHESS, Centre Alexandre Koyré / Université de Bordeaux, Laboratoire SPhH)Deux exemples manuscrits pour la pratique savante du capucin Yves de Paris? Un compte rendu d'observation d'une éclipse de Soleil et un cahier inédit d'horoscopes.

12:40-14:00 Lunch.

14:00-14:50 Robert A. Hatch (University of Florida), The Assassin, the Dung Beetle, and the Intestinal Coil. Boulliau & Morin on the Cosmic Order.

14:50-15:40. Rodolfo Garau (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice), Patrons and Frondeurs: Some Hypotheses on the Morin-Gassendi Controversy.

15:40-16:00 Coffee break.

16:00-16:50 Steven Vanden Broecke (Ghent University), Saving an Art, Isolating the Artists. Negotiating Astrology in the Morin-Gassendi debate (1642-1650).

16:50-17:15 Closing remarks.