Recent scholarship on the origins of the Scientific Revolution has included discussion of intercultural exchange as a precondition and binding element of the period, a debate that has led to a reexamination of the essential nature of this transformation. But how would one know what is essential? Historians make these judgments all the time in their acts of selection and emphasis, but these decisions are often implicit rather than explicit. This conference will be devoted to trying to determine what historians (both of science and of other disciplines) believe to be essential to the scientific revolution as a way of exploring the relative importance of other cultural contributions to modern science.

Further information can be found at the program’s website or by contacting Professor F. Jamil Ragep.