Measuring the World I

Coinciding with the exhibition Il mondo di Dante tra scienza e poesia, organized by the Museo Galileo and Gallerie degli Uffizi, this symposium seeks to explore Dante's profound meditation on the nature of space and time, as well as the notion of measuring the world in, through and with Dante.

Bringing together historians, literary scholars, and scientists, this explorative and experimental workshop invites reflection on Dante's meditation on the poetic potential of physics, the necessity of grounding artistic speculation in scientific awareness, and the ways in which measuring (both mathematical and metrical) is itself a form of world building. The conference, then, attempts to overcome the divide between the arts, philosophy, and the sciences to rediscover them, in Dante's wake, as platforms for inquiries that, when intertwined, open up perspectives, overcoming individual understandings and epochal preconceptions to consider the world afresh, in light of the multiverses contained and constructed by Dante’s texts. The symposium is the first in a series concentrated on Dante and will be followed by others exploring the productive tensions and exchanges between science and the arts, whose reciprocal listening is integral to the sustaining of life that takes measure, expansively, of the worlds "surrounding” it.

The workshop will be held in Italian / English as indicated by the titles of the contributions.

 

Program 

09:15 Palazzo Pitti (for speakers and guests only)

Visit to the Exhibition Il mondo di Dante tra scienza e poesia with the Curator Filippo Camerota (Museo Galileo)

11:00 Break 

11:30 Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai (for speakers and guests only)

Welcome and Introduction – Gerhard Wolf, Roberto Ferrari, Rebecca Bowen, Emanuele Lugli

11:45

Session 1: Building and Mapping Worlds 

Angelo Cattaneo (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Roma) – Implicit Measurements: Dante as a Performative Spectator of the Worlds

Nicolò Crisafi (University of Cambridge) – A Non-Teleological Poetic Universe

Anna Chisena (Università di Bologna) – Le scienze celesti nel Convivio: modelli, autori e immagini

13:15 Lunch break 

14:30

Session 2: A Poetic Universe 

Beatrice Bottomley (Warburg Institute, London) – The Zāʾijra, between Cosmological Construction and Divine Versification

Rebecca Bowen (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – MPI) – “Legato con amore in un volume”: Poetry and Eternity

15:30

Session 3: Dante and Metrics 

Chiara Cappuccio (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) – Misurare lo spazio attraverso il suono nella Commedia di Dante

Maria Clotilde Camboni (Sorbonne Université, Paris) – Dante, metro e misura

16:30 Break 

17:00

Session 4: The Measurement of Hell 

Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University) in conversazione con Pasquale Terraciano (Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento di Firenze)

17:40

Conclusions and Final Discussion – Moderated by Gerhard Wolf

18:15

Lectura Dantis: Paradiso XXXIII – letto da Emanuele Marchesini

 

Registration

For online attendance via Zoom:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcrduChrz4jGtwuMYMpugLLNnOR9w8etqDS