ERC NOSCEMUS and LBI Workshop “Pathos in Neo-Latin Scientific Writing”
From 12th until 13th November 2021, a hybrid workshop on the topic of “Pathos in Neo-Latin Scientific Writing”, organized from the ERC Project NOSCEMUS together the LBI for Neo-Latin Studies, was held in Innsbruck.
A close look at Neo-Latin scientific works—be they encyclopaedic treatises or dialogues, experiment reports or monographs—shows, in a stunning number of cases, high emotions, enthusiastic expressions of gratitude, praise, wonder and much more. Eleven contributions asked for the motivation behind such emotional outbursts in Neo-Latin scientific texts, its specific stylistic expressions, contemporary theoretical reflections about the style of scientific discourse, literary models for stylistic expressions, specific generic traditions and the role of physico-theology in the employment of pathos. The speakers treated the complex question of authority in new science texts, spoke about Francis Bacon’s varied appeals to the passions, about techniques of persuasion applied by naturalists of the Old Confederation, and their ancient models; about pathos in early modern dissertations and disputations, in microscopic literature and in poetry. The papers were followed by vivid discussions among the participants present in Innsbruck as well as the speakers and participants who joined online.