New ERC Project at the Maison Française d’Oxford: The Common Notion. Science and Consensus in the Seventeenth Century (NOTCOM)

Royal Society, Crane Court, off Fleet Street, London: a meeting in progress, with Isaac Newton in the chair. Wood engraving by J. Quartley after [J.M.L.R.], 1883. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection

New ERC Project at the Maison Française d’Oxford: The Common Notion: Science and Consensus in the Seventeenth Century (NOTCOM)

Mogens Laerke (Directeur de recherche/Senior Researcher CNRS, IHRIM, Lyon/MFO, Oxford)

As of January 2023, the Maison Française d’Oxford (MFO) co-hosts a five-year project on seventeenth-century natural philosophy entitled The Common Notion. Science and Consensus in the Seventeenth Century (NOTCOM), funded by an ERC Advanced Grant (no. 101052433). NOTCOM is a study of common notions, epistemologies and methods of collective science, and public dissemination strategies in seventeenth-century natural philosophy, with special focus on the role of so-called “common notions.” The project is conducted within the general framework of INSHS, the humanities and social sciences wing of the CNRS, and shared between the Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités (IHRIM) at ENS de Lyon, and the Maison Française d’Oxford (MFO). It includes important collaboration with the Oxford Centre for Intellectual History, the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, and other research centres in Oxford. The project will include a team of post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers, recruited in France or in the United Kingdom, and contribute to the organisation of a number of lectures, workshops, and conferences in Oxford, Lyon, and elsewhere, in collaboration with colleagues on both sides of the English Channel.