What are the origins of modern science? When did it first occur to investigators of nature to rely on experimentation? What made them confident that they could attain greater knowledge than their forebears, and greater power to improve the living conditions of mankind? Unsurprisingly, many of these developments came about as a result of new answers to perennial human questions. In his lecture, Prof. Lawrence Principe (Johns Hopkins) will explore one important strand of this story: some of the first medieval germinations of what became modern science were motivated by developments in theology—in particular, a fourteenth-century spirituality inspired by the life and teachings of St. Francis of Assisi and applied by the friar-alchemist John of Rupescissa.

Lawrence Principe is the Drew Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe at Johns Hopkins University. He holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Indiana University and a PhD in the History of Science from Johns Hopkins University.

This online lecture is open to the public.