Early Modern Ideas of Space and Spatiality
Résumé
We study concepts of space and spatiality in the European late Renaissance and early modern period, in particular in natural philosophy and related fields. We wish to show their richness, fluidity, and variety. The traditional narrative of Jammer or Koyré stretches from Cusa to Copernicus, then onward to Newton, and then, in the most ambitious accounts, to Einstein. This story stands in need of revaluation. To counterbalance familiarity, we will not shy away from the strangeness of early modern ideas of space and place. Instead of promoting a potted history, we prefer to explode boundaries and open up the historiography to a wider scope of disciplines.