MSCA Postdoctoral Project. University of Porto, 2023–2024.

HYLOGLOB (Hylomorphism in a Globalising World: Scholastic Debates on the Ontology of Nature Across Europe, China, and New Spain) is a research project funded by the European Union’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA-IF) delving into 16th-century scholastic theories of the ontological constitution of the natural world and their global impact. The project starts at UCLouvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, BE) in October 2023, and it is based there until January 2024 thanks to a fantastic secondment at the Institut supérieur de philosophie (ISP) working with Jacob Schmutz and his team.

From February 2024, the main base will be the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto (Porto, PT) and, in the February 2025 it will move once again, this time to Guangzhou (CN), for another secondment at Sun Yat-sen University, where I will be working with Thierry Meynard and his team.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Due to my professorship in Messina, HYLOGLOB has ended in January 2024.

HYLOGLOB aims at disentangling the metaphysical theories about the constitution of physical substances that have been produced in the 16th-c. debate and used as interpretative lenses to understand metaphysical and physical doctrines formulated in China and New Spain. You can find more info about HYLOGLOB’s aims and structure in the project description down below. As I started my tenure in Messina only a few months after HYLOGLOB begun, the project implementation was short lived. Yet, I will carry on the research nonetheless from beautiful Messina.

PROJECT TEASER

HYLOGLOB at UC Louvain

From the 16th century onwards, people, books, and ideas start to move globally. Although resulting from reprehensible colonialist tendencies that mark Europe at the time, this global circulation of knowledge nurtured a new way to tackle the natural world and its metaphysical foundations. While the common narrative tells a story in which the prodromes of the scientific revolution gradually evolve throughout this period, HYLOGLOB focuses on a different yet crucial aspect characterising the 16th and 17th centuries: the use of hylomorphism as primary explanatory device to understand non-European philosophical traditions and physical practices.

During its implementation at UCLouvain (October 2023-January 2024), HYLOGLOB’s main focus is the reconstruction of the circulation of the main ideas and texts about hylomorphism that moved from Europe to New Spain and China. Working with Jacob Schmutz’s team at the Institut supérieur de philosophie, the project will shed light on the material availability of philosophical texts in these areas. The latter is a preliminary condition for the analysis of the impact of scholastic hylomorphism in situ and the reception of new theories and claims proceeding from these areas to Europe.

HYLOGLOB in Beijing

Following a generous invitation by the Institute for Cultural Heritage and History of Science and Technology of USTB Beijing, I am going to spend a month in Beijing working with Shixiang Jin on comparative metaphysics, cross-cultural pollination, and the global history of natural philosophy. In this page, you will find more info on my activities in China in November-December 2023 – the first of a series of planned visits to foster a new, multifocal way to engage with metaphysics and natural philosophy in their global historical course.

You can read here a summary (by Cao Shenghao) of this superb experience.

Dissemination

Latest update: February 2024