All are invited to join the upcoming meeting of the *Styles and Method in the Early-Modern and the Modern Period Seminar*
*Gianna Pomata *(Johns Hopkins) *'The unbearable lightness of thinking: theory as "capriccio" in 17th-century medicine'* Date: *Monday 23 May 2022* Time: *17.30-19.30 (CEST/Rome Time)* Place: *Online* (Zoom) *No registration needed. Please click *here <http://unive.zoom.us/j/6569494316>* to attend the meeting* *Abstract* My contribution will focus on a surprising and hitherto unnoticed aspect of early modern epistemology: the fact that the term “capriccio” was used in 17th-century natural philosophy and medicine to indicate conjecture, hypothesis, or theory - in other words, as an antonym for observation. The term conveyed, in this context, a negative view of theory as mere opinion or “fancy”. Indeed, it carried some of the flavor of arbitrariness and unruliness that the word “caprice” was acquiring, in the same years, in the language of political theorists, particularly with the critics of the absolutist state. Right at the same time, in striking contrast, “capriccio” was acquiring a strongly positive currency in the arts. Starting with music in the 16th century, the term “capriccio” was extended to the visual arts and then to literature, to indicate a fashionable multimedia genre associated with liberty of form - “a genre that combined order and chaos”. It appears then that a “capricious” style became fashionable in the arts right when it was being frowned upon in the sciences. What was the meaning of these parallel and contrasting trends? I will argue that the negative meaning of “capriccio” in the sciences indicated: 1) the changing relationship of theory and observation in the 17th century, which strongly privileged observation over theory; 2) the beginning of a divergence between acceptable styles of thinking in scientific and artistic cultures, which would more fully develop in later periods. *Speaker* Gianna Pomata <https://hopkinshistoryofmedicine.org/people/gianna-pomata-phd/> is Professor Emerita at the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests include early modern European social and cultural history, with a main focus on the history of medicine. She is also interested in medical casuistry from the viewpoint of a comparative history of medical genres. A cross-cultural approach to the history of medical genres and epistemologies is a central feature of her present research work. She is currently completing a book titled *The Case Narrative in Pre-modern Medicine: A History Across Cultures*. Among her publications: *Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe *(MIT Press, 2005) and "The Medical Case Narrative: Distant Reading of an Epistemic Genre" *Literature and Medicine* 32, 1 (2014) *More information* This seminar is organized by Matteo Vagelli and is part of the activities of EPISTYLE <https://pric.unive.it/projects/epistyle/home>. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement number 101030646. Visit the website of the project <https://pric.unive.it/projects/epistyle/home> for more information and the complete program. Please note that the meeting will be recorded. By participating, you give your consent. -- https://www.vidal-rosset.net/mailing_list_educasupphilo.html