Princeton-Bucharest-Hamburg
Summer School in Early Modern Philosophy
HIAS’ 2024 Alumni Summer School for Doctoral Students and Postdocs took place from 14 to 21 July in Hamburg. For HIAS, summer schools organized by former HIAS-fellows (alumnae/alumni) are an excellent way to stay in touch with them, to foster continuity in the collaboration between the HIAS alumnae/alumni and their Hamburg tandem partners, and to invite a number of early career researchers to HIAS and link them with Hamburg academic institutions like Universität Hamburg or the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg.
This year, the HIAS Summer School was part of the prestigious Princeton-Bucharest-Hamburg collaboration in Early Modern Philosophy and revolved around the topic:
Controversies vs. Collaboration in the Scientific Revolution: Societies, Experiments, and the “Common Language” of Science across 17th and 18th Century Europe
Prof Dana Jalobeanu, organizer of the summer school, fellow at HIAS 2022/23 and professor at University of Bucharest, relates:
“The project of an intensive summer school for doctoral and post-doctoral students emerged naturally at the end of my stay at HIAS, following numerous discussions during the weekly seminar I organized (in a hybrid format) with colleagues from the University of Hamburg, University of Bucharest and Princeton University. This seminar had an interdisciplinary character, like almost all my enterprises, and its main aim was to foster collaboration between philosophers and historians of the early modern period. It is what I have tried to do during the past decades in creating the institution of the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, and it is in the spirit (and format) of the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar that I have planned the structure of the summer school. After a series of discussions with my tandem partner, Prof Matthias Schemmel (University of Hamburg) and his colleague and collaborator, Dr Rodolfo Garau (University of Hamburg), we agreed to make the very emergence of a modern notion of ‘collaboration’ in science the topic of this year’s summer school. We chose the title Controversies vs. collaboration in the scientific revolution: societies, experiments and the “common language” of science across seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe.
The theme
Collaborative research is an intrinsic part of scientific life and has been so for at least the past four hundred years. Many of our current institutions are designed to foster collaboration in small or large teams. Much has been written about the sociology and psychology of scientific collaboration and yet, one has the feeling that there is much we take for granted when speaking about what is essentially a historical category. We assess collaborative enterprises post-factum, usually in connection with their products; successful collaborations are those who led, eventually, to the advancement of knowledge. Looking at the history of scientific collaboration is extremely instructive for the understanding of the foundations and philosophy of the scientific life. Seventeenth century is a time of many collaborative enterprises; it is also a century in which scientific societies were invented, and multiplied. But seventeenth century is also a century of controversies; many collaborations failed and turned into controversies. One and the same author had successful collaborations and got into bitter controversies; and sometimes good collaborators become harsh controversialists.
Although collaboration is such an important aspect of modern scientific institutions, its nature and historical development was never fully investigated. The purpose of the summer school at HIAS was to make this interesting and important feature the centre of historical and philosophical investigations. In part, we chose this theme because it revolves around a familiar category to which it is easy to relate, cognitively and emotionally, and which regards us all. While investigating historical controversies and collaborative projects, we also encouraged participants to be self-reflexive, and think of their own collaborative experience.
The people
The organizing team of the summer school at HIAS comprised Prof Daniel Garber (Princeton University), my long-term collaborator in the organization of the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar, my tandem partner at the University of Hamburg, Prof Matthias Schemmel, and one of the long-standing participants to the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar, Dr Rodolfo Garau, now also a member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hamburg. Together, we set up a list of prestigious invited speakers, among them Prof Sophie Roux from ENS Paris, Prof Scott Mandelbrote from Cambridge University, and Prof Roger Ariew from University of South Florida. The nucleus of organizers and invited speakers brought to the organization of the summer school the expertise and experience of the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, an institution with more than two decades of experience. For this Sommer School 2024 at HIAS, we had 54 applicants, of which 36 students, 10 early career researchers and 8 tenured/faculty researchers. We have selected 18 participants: 10 students, 4 early career researchers and 4 young researchers who already have a stable position. Participants came from 8 countries (US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Turkey and Romania). In addition to these participants selected, we also had two PhD students from the University of Hamburg (ILAS), students of my tandem partner, Matthias Schemmel.
Objectives
The main objective of the summer school was to create a teaching and learning environment which could foster interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration, in a self-reflective exercise that would not only investigate the history of the phenomenon, but also induce questions about its nature. We selected researchers and students already interested in seventeenth-century collaborative enterprises (editions, correspondence networks, collaborative projects, the establishment of scientific societies, the circulation of books etc.) and we put together an interdisciplinary group of PhD students, early career researchers and more established researchers who worked excellently together.
Program and activities
The program of the summer school was structured around three kinds of activities: reading-groups in the morning, collaborative sessions in the afternoon, and evening lectures.
We had five reading groups, each structured around a corpus of seventeenth century texts illustrating a form of collaboration. Texts were distributed in advance, and participants were required to read and reflect on them. Each reading group involved a form of co-teaching. One of the professors gave a 45-hour introductory lecture, presenting the corpus of texts and the main questions. Then, the participants were divided into two groups and had one hour to discuss the main questions and come up with a set of interpretations. Groups were assigned different standpoints and interpretative contexts. Then, the two groups were brought together, and we had another hour of general discussions.
As to the collaborative sessions, the selected participants were distributed in five teams, and each team had to prepare one session. We had five very different collaborative sessions. One reflected on the different roles the early modern forms of collaborations involved, another addressed issues of method and methodological discussions, a third looked into a famous seventeenth century correspondence, a fourth addressed issues of representation and persuasion in the interplay between text and image in the seventeenth century scientific representation, and the fifth illustrated very different forms of shared knowledge featuring in seventeenth century collaborations (and controversies). What was even more interesting is that the five groups chose very different formats for their presentations, some under the form of a panel discussions, others choosing the reading group format, teamwork and role-play. Participants were very well prepared, and the collaborative sessions went extremely well.
We also had five evening lectures, open to the public, each reflecting on different aspects of collaboration and controversy in the seventeenth century thought. They were attended by guests from the Academy of Sciences and Humanities Hamburg and by PhD-students from the Philosophy department of Universität Hamburg.
Meta-reflexive tasks
In parallel with discussing texts and ideas, participants were also invited to reflect on their own collaborations, and their roles as collaborators. They were asked to reply in writing to a number of questions:
- What were the three main features of your best collaboration?
- Who were your best collaborators?
- If you had a failed collaboration, why did it fail?
- What did you notlearn about collaboration in your formal education?
It was extremely interesting to read through the replies, but we did more than reading. The written replies were turned into the material for three posters, realized by one of the students who is also an artist (Melania Tucureanu, University of Bucharest). We had a series of interesting discussions based on these posters (and the associated questions). The posters themselves remained at HIAS (also exposed here on the web page) and can be used as material for further discussions.
Social program
HIAS hospitality made it very easy to organize a set of social events in which people talked and exchanged ideas. One of the most collaborative of these social events was the dinner cooked in the HIAS kitchen by the participants – which contributed the most to the transformation of the group of colleagues into a group of friends and collaborators.
Evaluation and prospects
One recurrent theme in all the evaluations we got was the desire to ‘stay in touch’ and collaborate further, in events like this. It has become clear from discussions with participants, that such events are very much needed in the community; that they are a good complement to more formal conferences and colloquia. Moreover, participants were particularly interested to continue a common reflection on the phenomenon of collaboration and the investigation of early modern collaborative enterprises.”
From a HIAS point of view, we can only say a heartfelt thank you to Dana Jalobeanu for bringing such a brilliant collaboration to Hamburg and for being at the origin of such a vibrant and intense exchange that took place at the HIAS premises in July 2024 – on a topic – collaboration in science – that is obviously central to an Institute for Advanced Study.
The Summer School was co-funded by the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg, and Princeton University.
Director
Dana Jalobeanu, University of Bucharest and Universität Hamburg Fellow 2022/23
Co-Organizers
- Rodolfo Garau, Universität Hamburg
- Daniel Garber, Princeton University
- Matthias Schemmel, Universität Hamburg
Invited Speakers
- Roger Ariew, University South Florida
- Scott Mandelbrote, Cambridge University
- Sophie Roux, Ecole normal supérieure Paris



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