Dr Michael Friedman
Bonn University
On Epistemologies of Weaving and Texture in the Early Modern Period
Please register for the event here.
When:
Wednesday, Feb 11, 16:15-17:45
Where:
VUB Main Campus Etterbeek
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene
Raadzaal C2.07a
*Free of charge*
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Professor Cornelis J. Schilt invite you to a lecture by Dr Michael Friedman (Bonn University), entitled “On Epistemologies of Weaving and Texture in the Early Modern Period“. This lecture is part of the ERC lecture series ‘Knowledge in International Perspective’ (KIIP).
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Dr Michael Friedman: The 17th century saw the rise of new empirical approaches to the investigation of nature and of materials, prompting also inquiry of properties, which were not yet quite understood and were sometimes discussed metaphorically. I aim to examine one such property which played a role in 17th century natural philosophy of materialism: the property of ‘texture’, focusing three natural philosophers: Francis Bacon and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and the less known natural philosopher Joachim Jungius, and how these thinkers considered textile artisans.
Reflections on ‘texture’ prompted extensive usage of various weaving metaphors, employed to account for natural phenomena. Moreover, such reflections were also acting in a reverse way: they prompted views of textile-activities as an explanatory and exploratory model, to account for those emergent phenomena. Hence during the 17th century weaving metaphors began to be employed while investigating and inspecting emergent properties with new empirical methods. Such weaving metaphors operated as a catalysator for new terms and notions as well as for (new) conceptions of matter. To see this, I will examine how the notion of ‘textura’ was employed by Bacon, Leibniz and Jungius. Both Bacon and Leibniz employed the notion to account for the emerging property of the changing arrangement and order of the parts of examined materials; but this notion also was associated in Bacon’s writings with other terms, such as ‘order’ and ‘position’. Jungius, on the other hand, in his non-published manuscript Texturæ Contemplatio not only calls for a multi-faceted inquiry of textiles and texture, engaging with artisans, but also underlines that such properties should be considered in the framework of his conception of synhypostatic parts, being properties which no longer exist when the material dissolves or is destroyed. An example of such properties is order, position, and mutual contact of the various parts of the materials. This examination will lead me to inquire not only which role did textile artisan play in the reflections of these three thinkers, but also how the investigation of material properties was coupled with the metaphor of ‘texture’, and how this coupling was slowly uncoupled during the 18th century.
About Dr Michael Friedman
Michael Friedman is a historian of science and mathematics whose research examines conceptions of materiality and material practices from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. His work focuses on the emergence of material epistemology, investigating how visual, artisanal, and material practices—such as folding, weaving, and braiding—have been intertwined with scientific and symbolic knowledge across cultures and periods. In parallel, he studies the reconceptualization of materials in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as autonomous, intelligent, or active, asking which practices and social contexts enable such attributions.
He is an associate researcher at the University of Bonn and has previously held positions at Tel Aviv University, Humboldt University Berlin, the Fourier Institute in Grenoble, and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. He was a Senior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research (2024) and a visiting researcher at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and the Deutsches Museum in Munich. His current projects address the transformation of mathematical visualization from computer graphics to AI-generated diagrams, Hans Blumenberg’s reflections on non-conceptuality in science and mathematics, and the epistemological and philosophical implications of contemporary biomimetic materials.
About Prof. Dr. Cornelis J. Schilt
Cornelis J. Schilt is a research professor in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specialising in Renaissance, early modern knowledge formation in general and the life and writings of Isaac Newton in particular. In 2022, he received a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. With it, he started the project VERITRACE in which he investigates the influence of ancient wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy.
