Francesco Paolo de Ceglia

1) The History of Rationalities in the Modern Age.  

My Ph.D thesis was dedicated to the reconstruction of a 17th century mechanical dispute, in an exchange of views between scientists, including Galileo Galilei, and philosophers, some of whom were of Aristotelian background (as far as the difference between scientists and philosophers has meaning when applied to the early modern age). Ever since the time of that work, my objective has been to investigate the way in which different “linguistic universes” have historically clashed in the explanation of natural phenomena. I integrated my subsequent works on Georg Ernst Stahl and Friedrich Hoffmann, two of the most famous systemic physicians of the first half of the 18th century, into an analogous epistemological framework. The result was a vivid image of the relationship between animism and mechanism in European medicine in the modern age, much more complex – from the cultural, religious and socioeconomic points of view – than the historiographic tradition has taught. In recent years, with the aid of the methods of historical anthropology, I have been attempting to probe this same “agreement-disagreement” amongst different rationalities in the framework of the scientific culture of southern Italy in the 18th century. 

2) The History of the Scientific Collective Imagery.

At first my interest in visual arts intertwined with my studies of the history of medicine, giving shape to a few articles on the history of representations of the body, from the 18th century collections of anatomical wax figures to the exhibitions of Gunther von Hagens’ plastinated bodies, currently on exhibit in four continents. In recent years, the history of science communication in Italian cinema and television - in this case, often pure scientific divulgation - has been at the center of my interests. In fact, this is practically unexplored territory in scientific culture, made accessible only in recent years, thanks to the availability of digital tools which allow for the restoration, vision and reproduction of extremely delicate audio-visual materials. At the time that I am writing this summary of my main lines of research, I am working with a journalist on a science communication handbook.