麻豆传媒

Please join us for the third Bishkek Liberal Arts Seminar (BLAS) on Tuesday October 13th, 18:00 Bishkek time.

Meeting ID: 999 0900 6139;

Password: 144167

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It is a common view that ideas and viruses share key features such as stickiness, resilience, and contagiousness. A corollary of this view, popularized by such books as Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point (2002), is that epidemic models can also be used to explain 鈥渟ocial epidemics鈥欌�� 鈥� when ideas and products become popular in an uncontrolled manner. In recent years, epidemiology in general has received great impetus from the rise of network analysis as an independent and interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Ever since its inception, the tools of network analysis have been employed to study the spread of phenomena as diverse as epidemics, wildfires, and earthquakes. Following these developments, this paper will give a concrete example of how network analysis can improve our understanding of the way in which new ideas were circulated throughout history. Taking as a case study the 鈥渇ather of modern philosophy鈥� Ren茅 Descartes (1596-1650), I will show how a network analysis approach sheds new light on the circulation of his ideas across Europe. I will illustrate how 鈥渃onnectors鈥� (to borrow Gladwell's words) such as Constantijn Huygens and Marin Mersenne helped Descartes build a reputation by using their correspondence networks to spread the word about him across national and cultural borders.

Dr. Paolo Rossini is a Marie Sk艂odowska-Curie Fellow at the Erasmus School of Philosophy of Rotterdam. A historian of philosophy and science, with a doctoral dissertation on the life and mathematics of Giordano Bruno and specialising in the Renaissance and early modern period, he uses the interdisciplinary research field of Digital Humanities in the application of network analysis to historical research. His current project, titled 鈥淐artesian Network鈥�, combines quantitative network analysis and close reading of historical sources to study the diffusion of Cartesianism throughout 17th-century Europe.

For further information about the Bishkek Liberal Arts Seminars, please see the , or contact Dr. James Plumtree (plumtree_j@auca.kg).