Matteo Valleriani

Research Scholar

Dr.

Residence: since October 15, 1998

Profile

Matteo Valleriani's research focuses as well on ancient science as on early modern science.

Concerning the ancient science Matteo Valleriani is leader of the project Technology Transfer in Antiquity (Research Group E-CSG-III, Excellence Cluster TOPOI, Berlin).

In the ancient epochs, technological knowledge, its material achievements and the actual carriers of such practical knowledge and experience were constantly subject to certain forms of circulation. The early cultures of the so-called “ancient world” — the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas, the Eurasian Steppe and the Near East — were not only regionally located but also transregionally connected. Although it is seldom recognized, the ancient world was, to some degree, multicultural, multilingual and interdependent.

Concerning the early modern science, Matteo Valleriani's research focuses on models of generation of new scientific knowledge during the early modern period. The research develops from three different perspectives. First of all it closely concerns the work of Galileo Galilei (Project Galileo Engineer) as a paradigmatic figure - the figure of the engineer-scientist - historiographically representing a crossroad of different paths of scientific developments. Such developments can be parallel or intersecting, conflictual or integrating and often approach or come from different scientific disciplines such as, for example, astronomy, mechanics and military engineering.

Conversely, the results achieved in the frame of Galilean research can be used to further investigate the state of the art and major issues of practical knowldge, such as problems and success within a large spectrum of early modern scientific activities.

The research concerning Galileo's work addresses in particular the reconstruction of all of the aspects of practical knowledge that Galileo shared during his lifetime, so that the general hypothesis can be investigated as to whether scientific developments at the beginning of the early modern scientific revolution can be considered as reactions to urgent challenges determined by the booming technological enterprises of the Renaissance.

The second perspective of Matteo Valleriani's research is therefore concerned with the practical knowledge itself, with its logical and institutional structure, its methods, its accumulated experience and the way it was passed down. A wide range of practical activities are taken into consideration: shipbuilding, machine-building, military and civil architecture, metallurgy, practical geometry, hydraulics and pneumatics, optics, surveying, acoustics, and the design and construction of mathematical instruments. This research should as well determine the emergence of reflective knowledge based directly on practical activities, as engineers and architects began entering the scientific discourse already at the end of the 16th century. A case study within this research frame is concerned in particular with early modern hydraulics and pneumatics (Project Pratolino Garden) and focusses on the design and construction of water supply systems and pneumatic devices.

Following the astonishing development of practical and theoretical hydraulics during the 17th century, the research concerned with the interaction between experience and practice on the one hand and the theoretical approach on the other hand is further contextualized in the frame of the development of the so-called Jesuit mechanics (Jesuits' Mechanics between Galileo and Newton). As a case study the work of Niccolò Cabeo as a theoretician and, above all, as a leader of the hydraulic enterprises in the region of Bologna and Ferrara during the first half of the 17th century is taken into consideration. The relation between the practical experience accumulated during such an enterprise and Cabeo's theoretical codification of such knowledge in his commentary of Aristotle's Meteorology (1646) is at the core of this research.

A third and final perspective, which concerns all of the projects, considers the role played by ancient science during the Renaissance (Project CRC 644 - SP A6). Content, logical structures, and codified practical experiences are used and transformed to meet the great variety of new scientific needs and challenges of the early modern period. Aristotelian mechanics and Hellenistic hydromechanics, as these frameworks were conceived during the 16 century in particular, are the disciplines on which the work concerned with this perspective is based.