Scaling the cosmos in the Modern era

Conference organised by the Museo Galileo, Firenze, the Centre André-Chastel and the CNRS

PROGRAM

DAY 1 – OPENING & VISIT
Wednesday, November 19, 2025 | 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

• Welcome Address
  Roberto Ferrari (Executive Director, Museo Galileo) and Filippo Camerota (Scientific Director, Museo Galileo)
• Introduction to the Conference
  Florian Métral (CNRS/Centre André-Chastel, CPJ Arvigraph) and Maddalena Napolitani (Assistant Curator, Museo Galileo)
• Visit to the Museo Galileo collections (for conference speakers only)
  Giorgio Strano (Head of Collections, Museo Galileo) and Gaia Cugini (Assistant Curator, Museo Galileo)

DAY 2 – CONFERENCE DAY
Thursday, November 20, 2025 | 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM

9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Session 1: Early Modern Era I 

• Stéphane Toussaint (CNRS/Centre André-Chastel, Paris)
  Scaling the Cosmos in Marsilio Ficino’s De Amor
• Jérémie Koering (University of Fribourg)
  Scaling the Future. An Astromantic Sky in Mantua
• 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM | Coffee break
• Francesco Barreca (Università di Milano)
  Philosophizing with Hands: Patronage-Seeking, Theory Evaluation, and Popularization of Knowledge in Johannes Kepler
• Ruth Noyes (Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn)
  Odo van Maelcote’s Equinoctial Astrolabe: Print, Parallax, and the Society of Jesus in the Quest to Scale the Cosmos in Galilean Europe
• 12:15 AM – 1:45 PM | Free lunch

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM | Session 2: Early Modern Era II

• Günther Oestmann (Technical University of Berlin)
  Representing and Understanding Celestial Movements on a Comprehensible Scale: The Application of Equatoria and Gearing Mechanisms to Clocks
• Giorgio Strano (Museo Galileo)
  On Cassini and his Preference for Campani’s Telescopes

3:00 PM – 4:15 PM | Session 3: From the Late Modernity to the Contemporary Era

• Ilaria Ampollini (Università di Ferrara)
  Immersed in the Cosmos: Manipulation, Miniaturisation, and the Circulation of Scientific Knowledge (18^th-19^th Century)
• Charlotte Bigg (CNRS, Centre Alexandre-Koyré)
  Narratives of Cosmic Scaling and Their Alternatives in the Observatory Sciences since the 19^th Century
• 4:15 PM – 4:30 PM | Coffee break

4:30 PM – 5:45 PM | Session 4: Scaling the Cosmos in Contemporary Visual Displays

• Thomas Moser (Vienna University of Technology)
  Planet(arium) Hollywood: Cosmic Simulation, Visual Spectacle and Education in Mid-Century Los Angeles
• Enguerrand Lasclos (MUCEM, Marseille)
  Presentation of the Exhibition “Lire le ciel” (MUCEM, Marseille)
• 8:00 PM | Dinner (for conference speakers only)

DAY 3 – WORKSHOP & FINAL ROUNDTABLE
Friday, November 21, 2025 | 9:30 AM – 1:00 PM

9:30 AM – 11:00 AM | Workshop Presentations
All speakers from Day 2 will be kindly invited to act as respondents

• Ricardo Uribe (Freie Universität Berlin)
  Universal Clocks for the New World: Re-scaling Time in the Modern Era
• Angèle Tence (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
  The Hand-Cranked Celestial Globe on the Title-page of the Triompho di Fortuna (1527)
• Antoine Gallay (University of Lausanne)
• Making the Heavens Tangible: Late 17^th-Century Attempts to Represent the Cosmos in a Verisimilar Way
• 11:00 AM – 11:15 AM | Coffee break

11:15 AM – 12:45 AM | Final Roundtable
Contemporary Cartographies of the Cosmos in Geosciences and Astrophysics

• Claudia Principe (INHIHEO/IGG/CNR Pisa)
  Scaling the Earth Using Geological Maps
• François Bouchet (CNRS/Institut d’astrophysique de Paris)
  Scaling the Cosmos with Archaeological Light Maps

Moderators: Florian Métral and Maddalena Napolitani

Conclusion of the conference