Matteo Valleriani
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 1, Faculty Member
A corpus of 360 distinct early modern printed editions (from 1472 to 1650) containing Johannes de Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera is “dissected” into a corpus of 540 text-parts, 241 of them re-occurring at least once. Through the... more
A corpus of 360 distinct early modern printed editions (from 1472 to 1650) containing Johannes de Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera is “dissected” into a corpus of 540 text-parts, 241 of them re-occurring at least once. Through the exploration of the data, we recognized a relevant position for four anonymous authors in their social network. We demonstrate that the text-parts originally assigned to the anonymous authors were authored or edited by Georg Rheticus. By means of data analysis, we conclusively establish that Rheticus profoundly impacted the content of such textbooks for the introductory class in geocentric astronomy all over Europe between 1538 and 1629.
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Recent advances in object detection facilitated by deep learning have led to numerous solutions in a myriad of fields ranging from medical diagnosis to autonomous driving. However, historical research is yet to reap the benefits of such... more
Recent advances in object detection facilitated by deep learning have led to numerous solutions in a myriad of fields ranging from medical diagnosis to autonomous driving. However, historical research is yet to reap the benefits of such advances. This is generally due to the low number of large, coherent, and annotated datasets of historical documents, as well as the overwhelming focus on Optical Character Recognition to support the analysis of historical documents. In this paper, we highlight the importance of visual elements, in particular illustrations in historical documents, and offer a public multi-class historical visual element dataset based on the Sphaera corpus. Additionally, we train an image extraction model based on YOLO architecture and publish it through a publicly available web-service to detect and extract multi-class images from historical documents in an effort to bridge the gap between traditional and computational approaches in historical studies.
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The Sphere project stands at the intersection of the humanities and information sciences. The project aims to better understand the evolution of knowledge in the early modern period by studying a collection of 359 textbook editions... more
The Sphere project stands at the intersection of the humanities and information sciences. The project aims to better understand the evolution of knowledge in the early modern period by studying a collection of 359 textbook editions published between 1472 and 1650 which were used to teach geocentric cosmology and astronomy at European universities. The relatively large size of the corpus at hand presents a challenge for traditional historical approaches, but provides a great opportunity to explore such a large collection of historical data using computational approaches. In this paper, we present a review of the different computational approaches, used in this project over the period of the last three years, that led to a better understanding of the dynamics of knowledge transfer and transformation in the early modern period.
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This article outlines the state of digital perspectives in historical research, some of the methods and tools in use by digital historians, and the possible or even necessary steps in the future development of the digital approach. We... more
This article outlines the state of digital perspectives in historical research, some of the methods and tools in use by digital historians, and the possible or even necessary steps in the future development of the digital approach. We begin by describing three main computational approaches: digital databases and repositories, network analysis, and Machine Learning. We also address data models and ontologies in the larger context of the demand for sustainability and linked research data. The section is followed by a discussion of the (much needed) standards and policies concerning data quality and transparency. We conclude with a consideration of future scenarios and challenges for computational research.
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Paratexts, such as dedication letters or epigrams, in early modern printed books can be used by historians to situate a book’s production in its institutional and social context. We depart from the general assumption that two publishers... more
Paratexts, such as dedication letters or epigrams, in early modern printed books can be used by historians to situate a book’s production in its institutional and social context. We depart from the general assumption that two publishers or printers were in a relation of awareness of each other if they printed and put on the market two different editions that contain at least one identical paratext. In this paper, we analyze the circulation of the paratexts among the 359 editions of the “Sphaera corpus.” First, we discuss the available data, the conditions to build a social network, and the latter’s characteristics. Second, we interpret the results—potential relationships among printers and publishers—from a historical point of view and, at the same time, discuss the sorts of potential relationships that this method can disclose. Third, we corroborate the historical results among different approaches, namely by using editions’ fingerprints and by investigating the book production of ...
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The ultimate objective of this work is to demonstrate that it is possible to reconsider the emergence of modern science as a process of disintegration of the quadrivium, which was considered a stable scheme for the organization of... more
The ultimate objective of this work is to demonstrate that it is possible to reconsider the emergence of modern science as a process of disintegration of the quadrivium, which was considered a stable scheme for the organization of knowledge. The argument considers the quadrivium according to the Boethian systematization that was used to organize the curricula of the late medieval universities. This argument follows the development of each of its disciplines and illustrates the practical turn they underwent. The period between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries is explored, and shows that during this period, the quadrivium potentially included a fifth autonomous discipline, calendric. The article concludes by describing epistemological considerations to the mechanisms of disintegration of knowledge structures.
Research Interests: Epistemology and Host
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These 3 datasets are based on the corpus of books built within the project "The Sphere" (https://sphaera.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/). The first 2 datasets are edges of a network of early modern creators of text-parts whose works were... more
These 3 datasets are based on the corpus of books built within the project "The Sphere" (https://sphaera.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/). The first 2 datasets are edges of a network of early modern creators of text-parts whose works were published together during their life time. The last dataset is a list of text-parts presumably authored or edited by Georg Rheticus. Prepared for the publication of<strong> "</strong>The Hidden <em>Praeceptor</em>: How Georg Rheticus Taught Geocentric Cosmology to Europe" by Matteo Valleriani, Olya Nicolaeva and Beate Federau in <em>Perspectives on Science</em>.
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The chapter is concerned with the epistemic structures of mechanical knowledge in its historical transformations. It describes these structures using the concept of mental models as cognitive instruments, which function as mediators... more
The chapter is concerned with the epistemic structures of mechanical knowledge in its historical transformations. It describes these structures using the concept of mental models as cognitive instruments, which function as mediators between the realm of practice and experience on the one hand, and conceptual systems on the other. With the help of the concept of mental model, the chapter discusses how mechanical knowledge has emerged from experience in practical contexts and how it was transformed into theoretical and mathematically formalized knowledge systems. Focusing on one particular mental model, which describes the cognitive structure conceptualizing motion as being caused by forces, the chapter then follows its transformations in the long-term history of mechanical thinking.
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The Nature of Pre-Classical Mechanics Jurgen Renn, Matthias Schemmel, Matteo Valleriani 2. Institutions, Discourses, Correspondence Networks in the Era of Pre-Classical Mechanics Rivka Feldhay and Michael Elazar Case Studies 1. New... more
The Nature of Pre-Classical Mechanics Jurgen Renn, Matthias Schemmel, Matteo Valleriani 2. Institutions, Discourses, Correspondence Networks in the Era of Pre-Classical Mechanics Rivka Feldhay and Michael Elazar Case Studies 1. New Science in Galileo's New Science of Motion Jochen Buttner 2. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Cosmology and the Centrobaric Theory from Antiquity to the Renaissance ElioNenci 3. A Treatise on Galileian Mechanics: The Exercitationes in Mechanicis Aristotelis (1634) by the Jesuits Giovan Battista Zupi Romano Gatto 4. Heaviness and Lightness in the 17th Century: A Jesuit Perspective Rivka Feldhay and Ayeletibn Ezra 5. Jesuit Post-Galilean Conceptions of Impetus: Honore Fabri, Paolo Casati, and Francesco Eschinardi Rivka Feldhay and Michael Elazar
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Research Interests: Ballistics and Pendragon
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Research Interests: History and Philosophy
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The Villa d’Este in Tivoli near Rome was the last building project of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este and the one that secured him lasting fame. One of its main attractions is the hydraulic organ integrated into a fountain system, called the... more
The Villa d’Este in Tivoli near Rome was the last building project of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este and the one that secured him lasting fame. One of its main attractions is the hydraulic organ integrated into a fountain system, called the Fountain of the Organ. This paper points to a source describing the organ’s mechanism that has been ignored until now: Oreste Vannocci Biringucci’s translation of Hero’s Pneumatics, which was commissioned in the course of building pneumatic devices in another famous villa garden, the Medici garden in Pratolino. Hero’s text is followed by a description of the technical apparatus and functioning of Tivoli’s organ, which is published and translated here for the first time. The research is based on two different descriptions of the organ of Tivoli and on a virtual reconstruction of the hydraulic organ built within the scenic reproduction of the legendary Mount Parnassus at the garden of Pratolino. By means of a comparative analysis, it will be shown that the practical experience of Renaissance pneumatic engineers is superior to the knowledge codified in the ancient texts. As a consequence, this work also shows how Renaissance gardens represented the knowledge platform for theoretical and practical knowledge.
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Research Interests: Metallurgy and Ballistics
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Ulrich Alertz; Frank Haster; Thomas Kreft; Dietrich Lohrmann.Electronic Commented Edition of Leonardo da Vinci,Codex Madrid I, Madrid Biblioteca Nacional, MS 8937. www.codex-madrid.rwth-aachen.de. Project of the Historisches Institut des RWTH Aachen. Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaftmore