Dr Xiaona Wang, 2019-20 Susan Manning Fellow at IASH, has secured a prestigious Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Warwick’s Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. Her project examines the history of gravity from around 1200 up to 1800, a longue durée and wide-ranging history:
From Falling Bodies to Orbiting Planets: A New History of Gravitational Theories in Europe (c. 1200–1800)
The history of pre-Einsteinian gravitational theories has been almost entirely focussed on the work and influence of Isaac Newton. But Newton’s achievement has overshadowed both the major contributions made by previous writers and the radically innovative work performed in the eighteenth century on cosmological Black Holes and the Nebular Hypothesis. To challenge the Newtonocentrism that dominated older histories, my Leverhulme ECF project is a history of ideas about gravity from around 1200 up to 1800 that addresses the conceptual, methodological, and disciplinary aspects of key theories; relates them to religious and metaphysical concerns; and situates them in several relevant intellectual traditions. Although the focus of my project will be on gravitational concepts, I will pay proper attention to the ways in which theorists made use of supporting instrumental evidence, and I will analyse how ideas were circulated in letters, journals and books throughout Europe.
Our congratulations to Dr Wang for this richly-deserved success.