Measuring the World by Degrees. Intensity in Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy (1400-1650)

• Applicant: Dr. Fabrizio Bigotti, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy ; History of Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 461231785

The project sets out to explore early modern forms of quantification that developed in medicine and natural philosophy as related to the measurement of intensity, an essential thread to various disciplines of knowledge which has never been studied in relation to the topic and for the period considered in this proposal (1400-1650). These forms provided new ways to understand the body and its functioning which were later reflected in programmes of proper quantitative experimentation (Marliani) and in the invention of precision instruments (Sanctorius, Marci, Kircher), thus testifying to the original, vital, and pivotal role played by medicine in the early modern effort to mathematise nature. Fundamentally the project seeks to collect, classify and explore the different notions, applications, and visualisations of intensity in medicine and natural philosophy, with the possibility to further expand the results in a different stage, so as to include the experimental applications of intensity. In this sense, and especially with contributions from the field of mechanics and theology, the project has the potential to prepare the groundwork for proper evaluation of theories of measurement of intensity from the late middle ages through the entire early modern period (1350-1750), thus having a great impact on the current state-of-the-art. Methodologically, this proposal will challenge the very concept of 'paradigmatic change' and current approaches to the ‘scientific revolution’, which have regarded medicine as a non-relevant field of analysis. In particular, it will show that the emergence of “mechanical concept of force” coexisted with the old paradigm of intensity for quite a while and kept interacting with it to suggest new insights, both in physics (as in the case of Leibniz’s 'vis viva') and philosophy, giving new impetus to the analytical study of emotions and perception (as in Barumgarten's 'quantitas virtutis' and Kant's principle of the anticipation of perception). The project is thus expected to fill a major intellectual gap and open new directions for the study of the early modern period in general.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants