International Society for Intellectual History

‘Quarrels, Polemics and Controversies’

Third Annual I.S.I.H. Conference

Trinity College, Cambridge, U.K.
26-29 July 2001

This conference has been arranged with the generous support of the CNRS, Paris; the Foundation for Intellectual History; the French Cultural Delegation, Cambridge and the French Embassy, London; and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Programme

Thursday 26 July

 11.00 

REGISTRATION OPENS
(Old College Office)

Book Display

3.30-
5.00

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Françoise Waquet (CNRS, Paris)

followed by

PLENARY I
Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)
'Double standards: reflections on the history of plagiarism'

Chair: Françoise Waquet (CNRS, Paris)

6.00

College Bar Open
(I Great Court)

7.00

Dinner
(Hall)

Friday 27 July

9.00

I

1. THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES I
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Eric von der Luft (SUNY Upstate Medical University)
'Disputes and quarrels as philosophical devices: conceits, contrivances, or concepts?'

Serguei Zenkine (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow)
'The "resistance to theory" and modern hermeneutic quarrels'

Sven-Eric Liedman (Göteborg University)
'From Turing to Putnam: on artificial intelligence and human knowledge'

Chair: Nancy Struever (Johns Hopkins University)

2. QUARRELS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
(Old Combination Room)

Levent Yilmaz (EHESS, Paris)
'Les querelles de "la" Querelle'

Catherine Maire (CNRS and EHESS, Paris)
'Jansénistes et jésuites: de la querelle historiographique à la bataille politique'

Claudio Canaparo (University of Exeter)
'Newton's flight in a cybernetic world'

Chair: Edoardo Tortarolo (University of Turin)

11.00

Coffee
(Blue Boar Common Room)

11.30

II

4. ANCIENTS VS. MODERNS
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Stephen Gaukroger (University of Sydney)
'Bacon versus the ancients: personal abuse or critique of mentalities?'

Andreas Scheib (Universität Mannheim)
'Adriaan Heereboord: Kontroverse versus Interpretation'

Jürgen Klein (Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Universität, Greifswald)
'Bacon's quarrel with the Aristotelians'

Chair: Constance Blackwell (Foundation for Intellectual History)

5. ENLIGHTENMENT QUARRELS ABOUT RATIONAL RELIGION
(Old Combination Room)

Eric Carlsson (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
'Whose Jesus? Which rational religion? Lessing, Semler and the Reimarus controversy'

Scott Breuninger (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
'"Freethinkers" or "Minute Philosophers"? Rationality and religion during an episode of the early English Enlightenment'

Eric Keyes-Brown (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
'Henry Hammond and Hugo Grotius: an early episode in the moderate Enlightenment'

Chair: H. B. Nisbet (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge)

1.00

Lunch
(Hall)

2.30

VI

7. FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Marcelo Dascal (Tel Aviv University) and Christina Marras (Tel Aviv University)
'The République des lettres: a republic of quarrels?'

Shai Frogel (Tel Aviv University)
'Bramhall vs Hobbes: a rhetoric of religion vs a rhetoric of philosophy'

April Shelford (University of the West Indies)
'Secret quarrel, public stakes: a story of censorship in seventeenth century France'

Chair: Mordechai Feingold (Virginia Polytechnic Institute)

8. QUARRELS AND PUBLICITY
(Old Combination Room)

Matthijs van Otegem (Utrecht University)
'The pamphlet game: the Copernican revolution and the struggle for political power in Dutch Cartesian pamphlets (1655-1656)'

Filippo De Vivo (Trinity College, Cambridge)
'Two ways of meeting a challenge: responses to controversy in early seventeenth-century Venice'

John van Wyhe (University of Cambridge)
'Science vs religion; or, my gods are better than your gods? the controversies over Combe's Constitution of Man, 1820s-50s'

Chair: Sachiko Kusukawa (Trinity College, Cambridge)

4.00

Tea
(Blue Boar Common Room)

4.30-
7.00

III

10. DISPUTATION AND BELIEF
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Walter Sparn (Universität Erlangen)
'Die eristische Konstruktion religiöser Identität. Polemik, Irenik, Synkretismus im Prozeß der theologisch regulierten Differenzierung und Entdifferenzierung der nachreformatorischen Konfessionen'

Marzieh Kouhi (Tehran International Studies and Research Institute)
'Roots of quarrel in the area of religion: Iran as a case study'

Markus Friedrich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München)
'Essentials and elements of theological quarrels between 1577 and 1618: the case of Daniel Hofmann in Helmstedt (1598-1601)'

Martin Gierl (Göttingen)
'How orthodoxy shapes heterodox beliefs: Pietist theology as an outcome of the Pietist controversy'

Martin J. Burke (Lehman College and the Graduate School, City University of New York)
'Contending mightily for the faith: Catholics, Protestants and religious controversies in the United States, 1790-1850'

Chair: Catherine Maire (CNRS and EHESS, Paris)

11. QUARRELS AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING
(Old Combination Room)

Jeff Bell (Southeastern Louisiana University)
'Intellectual quarrels and intellectual creativity: the case of the Scottish Enlightenment'

Catherine Goldstein (CNRS, Paris)
'Routine controversies: mathematical challenges in early modern France'

Laszlo Ropolyi (Eotvos University, Budapest)
'Quarrels and controversies in thermodynamics'

Simone Mazauric (Université de Nancy 2)
'Les querelles scientifiques et leur postérité: la rémanence des débats autour de l'oeuvre de Pascal et de la question du vide (XVIIe-XXe siècles)'

Chair: Dorinda Outram (University of Rochester)

7.15

Dinner
(Hall)

8.30

International Society for Intellectual History
Annual General Meeting
(Old Combination Room)

Saturday 28 July

9.00

IV

13. BETWEEN LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY: DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Isabelle Dubail (Paris)
'Les normes esthétiques du discours privé dans la controverse publique: fortunes du colloque d'Erasme Inquisitio de fide (1524)'

Dominique Weber (Paris)
'Règles de la communication scientifique et écritures de la science. La controverse entre Thomas Hobbes et John Wallis'

Emmanuel Bury (Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines)
'Crise universitaire, statut du pamphlet et poétique du burlesque: le cas Boileau'

Fiammetta Palladini (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome and Freie Universität, Berlin)
'Wie mann seine Gegner lächerlich und unwürdig macht. Einige Beispiele aus S. Pufendorf polemischen Werken über das Naturrecht'

Chair: Jean-Charles Darmon (Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines)

14. THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES II
(Old Combination Room)

Steven Lestition (Princeton University)
'Ethical dimensions of 18th century philosophical polemics: Kant's attack on traditional metaphysics and his critics'

Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel)
'Leibniz as a postmodern weapon: sufficient reason in Leibniz, Heidegger, Deleuze'

Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Freie Universität Berlin)
'The philological destruction of Veritas Hebraica in Richard Simon's Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament'

Matthias Kross (Einstein Forum, University of Potsdam)
'Bloor vs Latour'

Chair: Hans Aarsleff (Princeton University)

11.00

Coffee
(Blue Boar Common Room)

11.30

V

16. HUMAN PASSIONS
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Craig McConnell (California State University at Fullerton)
'Contentiousness and the cosmos: disputes, polemics and controversies in modern cosmology'

John Hope Mason (Middlesex University)
'The quarrel as fratricide: Rousseau and Diderot'

John Morra (Kings High School, Kings Mills, Ohio)
'The man in the middle: Albert Sabin and the polio quarrels'

Chair: Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggeman (Freie Universität Berlin)

17. CIVILITY AND VIOLENCE
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Emily Butterworth (Girton College, Cambridge)
'A seventeenth-century response to slander: Marie de Gournay'

Louisa Shea (Harvard University)
'Disputing politeness: The Hume-Rousseau affair'

Claude-Pierre Perez (Université de Provence)
'Un duel avorté en 1927. Les surréalistes, Jean Paulhan et la NRF'

Chair: Richard Serjeantson (Trinity College, Cambridge)

1.00

Lunch
(Hall)

2.30

PLENARY II
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Wolfgang J. Mommsen (Düsseldorf)
'Historikerstreit: controversial historiographical approaches to National Socialism and the Holocaust during the 1980s'

Chair: Edoardo Tortarolo (University of Turin)

4.00

Tea
(Blue Boar Common Room)

4.30-
7.00

VII

19. THE INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE IN ART HISTORY IN VIENNA FROM 1900 to 1938
The Vienna School of art history in conflict
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Sybille-Karin Moser (University of Innsbruck)
'Idea in the theory of art. Philosophy or rhetoric? Gombrich versus Panofsky'

Michael Ann Holly (Rochester University and Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts)
'Quarrel and controversy: Viennese art history in 1900'

Martina Sitt (Hamburger Kunsthalle)
'Anmerkungen zu einem Mittel der kunsthistorischen Kontroverse: das künstlerische Zitat als Legitimationswaffe'

Chair: Sybille-Karin Moser (University of Innsbruck)

20. POLITICAL STAKES
(Old Combination Room)

Cary J. Nederman (Texas A&M University, College Station)
'The quarrelsome republic: Machiavelli on the contentious foundations of political liberty'

Hans Aarsleff (Princeton University)
'Was the French Enlightenment soulless and mechanical?'

Pieter De Klerk (University of Potchefstroom for CHE)
'History, theory and nationalism: a quarrel among South African historians'

Lia Yoka (University of Thessaly)
'Orthodoxy vs neoclassicism: aesthetic and political oppositions in the early twentieth century'

Warren Breckman (University of Pennsylvania)
'Democracy and disenchantment: the "political" and the "religious" in contemporary French thought'

Chair: Donald Kelley (Rutgers University, New Brunswick)

7.00

College Bar Open
(I Great Court)

7.30

Conference Dinner
(Hall)

Sunday 29 July

9.00

VIII

22. THE QUARREL OF RHETORIC AND PHILOSOPHY - AGAIN
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Eugene Garver (Saint John's University)
'Confronting a sophist; or, how did "communicate" become an intransitive verb?'

Nancy Struever (Johns Hopkins University)
'Rhetoric, not philosophy: a gloss on Hobbesian and Vichian innovations'

Daniel Gross (University of Iowa)
'Being moved: the pathos of Heidegger's rhetorical ontology'

Chair: Letizia Panizza (Royal Holloway College, University of London)

23. CLASH OF CULTURES II
The West vs The Rest
(Old Combination Room)

Noemí Goldman (Universidad de Buenos Aires/CONICET) and Alejandro Kaufman (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
'Cultura derivativa y polémicas sobre la traducción en la Argentina, siglos XIX y XX'

Saheed A. Adejumobi (Wayne State University)
'"Life More Abundant": colonial transition and the politics of social reform in Southwestern Nigeria, 1940-1966'

Michael Carhart (New Jersey Legislature Oral History Project and Rutgers University)
'Myth-making in the eighteenth century: egalitarianism'

Dolores Chew (Marianopolis College, Montreal)
'Indigenous self and foreign other: power games and stakes with regard to colonialism, gender and family in the Tagore law lectures'

Chair: Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel)

11.15

Coffee
(Blue Boar Common Room)

11.30

Concluding Remarks
(Winstanley Lecture Theatre)

Edoardo Tortarolo (University of Turin)

12.00

Conference Closes


       Conference Homepage