Social Epistemology and the Middle Ages: Negotiating Epistemic Norms In and Out

Presentation:

This workshop aims to explore the relevance of social epistemology for the study of medieval knowledge. While medievalists have long investigated the production, transmission, and authority of knowledge, the conceptual tools developed in contemporary social epistemology (such as epistemic authority, testimony, credibility, and epistemic injustice) offer new ways of approaching these issues. This event seeks to assess both the potential and the limits of such an approach in a medieval context.

We invite contributions examining how epistemic norms – understood as the criteria governing what counts as valid, credible, or authoritative knowledge – were constructed, distributed, and contested in medieval societies. Particular attention will be paid to processes of inclusion and exclusion (“in and out”), whether articulated in medieval theories of knowledge or experienced in practice by historical actors: who could participate in the production of knowledge, whose voices were recognized as authoritative, under what conditions, and within which boundaries. 

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Program:

9.00-9.15: Welcome

9.15-10.00: Pierre-Luc Desjardins (ITI-HiSAAR, Strasbourg Univ.): “Epistemic injustice in the Middle Ages”

10.00-10.45: Claudia Appolloni (KU Leuven): "Intentio Ecclesiae: The Epistemic Role of the Church in Thirteenth-Century Sacramental Theology”

10.45-11.00: Coffee break

11.00-11.45: Aurélien Robert (CNRS, Paris): “William Crathorn on Nature and Conventions”

12.00: Lunch break

13.30-14.15: Sophie Serra (Lund University): “Nicole Oresme on what are astral sciences?” 

14.15-15.00: Matthew Siebert (Belmont Abbey College): “The Epistemic Norm of Truthfulness in Scholastic Philosophy”

15.15-16.00: Coffee break

16.00-16.45: Margaretha Nordquist (Stockholm University): “Knowing Your Family: Women and Genealogy in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Sweden”

16.45-17.15: General discussion

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Organisation: 

S. Serra & P.-L. Desjardins, with the support of Ana Maria Mora Marquez'"Reassessing Aristotelian Science" research project.