---
Alumni

Joyce van Leeuwen

(Jan 2016-Dec 2017)

Joyce van Leeuwen is currently working on a book on the Latin translation of the Aristotelian Mechanics with commentary by the Italian humanist Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (Quaestiones Mechanicae, 1525), which will be published in the framework of the Edition Open Sources book series of the MPIWG. She is especially interested in the diagrams and images in Tomeoʼs translation of the Mechanics, as the varying diagrammatic practices shed light on the context of the mechanical discipline in the sixteenth century.

She obtained her doctorate from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2012 with a thesis on the transmission processes of the text and diagrams of the Aristotelian Mechanics. In this project she examined the Greek manuscript tradition of the treatise and demonstrated an urgent need for a new critical edition of the text. Her analysis of the diagrams contained in the Greek manuscripts of the treatise has shown that diagrams are a powerful means in studying processes of the transfer and transformation of knowledge.

Selected Publications

Van Leeuwen, Joyce (2017). “Antike Mechanik im 16. Jahrhundert.” In Antike als Transformation: Konzepte zur Beschreibung kulturellen Wandels, ed. J. Helmrath, E. M. Hausteiner, and U. Jensen, 197–208. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515…

Read More

van Leeuwen, Joyce (2016). The Aristotelian mechanics : text and diagrams. Boston studies in the philosophy and history of science 316. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25925-3.

Read More

Van Leeuwen, Joyce (2016). “Manuscripts.” In A companion to the history of science, ed. B. Lightman, 331–343. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.

Read More

van Leeuwen, Joyce (2014). “Thinking and learning from diagrams in the Aristotelian mechanics.” Nuncius 29 (1): 53–87. https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-02901003.

Read More

Feature Story