Marco Storni

Hi, welcome to my website!

I work as a postdoc at the Université libre de Bruxelles in the framework of the EOS project RENEW18. After completing my PhD at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris and the University of Bologna in 2018, I have been a postdoc at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in the framework of the ERC project Early Modern Cosmology (2019-20), and a postdoc at the University of Neuchâtel in the framework of the SNSF project Mesure du temps, chimie et cuisine (2020-23).

I am interested in the evolution of scientific knowledge during the early modern period, particularly the eighteenth century. A central concern of my work is the relationship between natural-philosophical theories and the practical, material, and visual dimensions of scientific inquiry. Rather than treating ideas, instruments, images, and practices as separate domains, I consider how they shaped one another in specific historical contexts.

My research can be grouped into three main areas: (1) natural philosophy in eighteenth-century France; (2) the material and visual dimensions of scientific practice; (3) scientific institutions and the construction of expertise.

To find out more about my research, you might read this page.

- News -

My chapter “Governing the Experimental Body: Codification, Delegation, and the Economy of Practice in the Early Modern Period” has been published in Gold Open Access in the volume The Legal Anatomy of the Body (Springer), edited by Mauro Balestrieri and Alice Cauduro.
I have been awarded the Italian National Habilitation (ASN) for Associate Professor in “Logic, History and Philosophy of Science” (Section 11/C2) for the period 2025-2037.
On 17 April 2024, I have participated in the radio show Le cours de l’histoire, on France Culture, to talk about the history of fire, with Olivier Jandot (historian) and Xavier Mauduit (host). You can find the podcast here.

Astronomical Observatories and Chronometry, 18th-20th Century

Studies in Honour of Paolo Brenni

Edited by Gianenrico Bernasconi, Ileana Chinnici and Marco Storni

Cham: Springer, 2025

Abstract: This book presents research perspectives and open questions on the intersections between astronomy and chronometry. Their study is of crucial importance to the new historiography of observatories. On the one hand, pendulums were fundamental tools for astronomical observation, as measuring time was essential to record the transit of stars and organize astrographic charts. On the other hand, astronomical observation was the method employed for time determination before the introduction of atomic clocks in the mid-20th century. Chapters of this book cohere around 5 sections: starting from the 18th century, and going through the 19th and 20th, the relations between observatories and chronometry (and more generally between practices and materiality) are analyzed from the standpoint of the quest for precision, the certification of timepieces, the acquisition and use of specific apparatus, as well as the circulation of knowledge and of instruments on a global scale.

Contributors: Emily Akkermans, David Aubin, Trudy E. Bell, Amandine Cabrio, Ileana Chinnici, Dalia Deias, Bart Fried, Paolo Galluzzi, Jean-François Gauvin, Louis Georges, Julien Gressot, Romain Jeanneret, S. Prashant Kumar, Ion Mihailescu, Yolanda Muñoz Rey, Günther Oestmann, Christiaan Sterken, and Gudrun Wolfschmidt.

You can order the book here.

GoogleBooks link.

Early Modern Fire

Science, Technology, and the Urban Space

Edited by Gianenrico Bernasconi and Marco Storni

Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2025

Abstract: Early Modern Fire offers new perspectives on the history of fire in early modern Europe (ca. 1600–1800). Far from the background role that scholarship has traditionally assigned to fire, the essays in this volume demonstrate its centrality to understanding the entangled histories of science, technology, and society in the pre-industrial period.

Analysing case studies ranging from alchemy to cooking and from firefighting to fireworks, the contributors show that the history of fire is not only one of change and progress, but also of continuity, characterised by the persistence of traditional know-how, small-scale innovation, and the coexistence of different paradigms.

Contributors: Gianenrico Bernasconi, Catherine Denys, Hannah Elmer, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Olivier Jandot, Cyril Lacheze, Andrew M.A. Morris, Cornelia Müller, Bérengère Pinaud, Stefano Salvia, Marco Storni, Marie Thébaud-Sorger, and Simon Werrett.

You can order the book here.

GoogleBooks link.

I was generously awarded a prize (“prix d’encouragement à la création littéraire”) by the Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca-Institut de France for my book on Maupertuis.

In this video, filmed at the Foundation, I discuss my research with Morgane Le Roy (librarian at the Institut de France) and Kaouther Adimi (another prizewinner).

Maupertuis

Le philosophe, l’académicien, le polemiste

Paris: Honoré Champion, 2022

Prix de la Fondation Del Duca-Institut de France 2023

Abstract: Aujourd’hui presque oublié, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) est pourtant une figure majeure de la vie intellectuelle et institutionnelle du siècle des Lumières. Cet ouvrage se propose de renouveler l’image du savant en approfondissant certains aspects saillants de sa vie et de son œuvre, et de lui restituer ainsi la place qu’il mérite dans l’histoire de son siècle. Il s’agit notamment d’interroger la genèse et l’évolution de sa pensée philosophique, en dévoilant l’originalité de son épistémologie et de sa métaphysique. L’identité du « Maupertuis philosophe » se construit en parallèle avec celle de l’« académicien » et du « polémiste ». C’est pourquoi ce volume consacre aussi un large espace à l’étude des milieux académiques où Maupertuis travailla, à Paris comme à Berlin, ainsi qu’aux controverses auxquelles il prit part.

Reviews: Centaurus (O. Matei); Physis (P. D. Omodeo); Dix-huitième siècle (A. Carcreff); Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (E. H. Barnet); Acta Fabula (J.-C. Bourdin); French Studies (A. Thompson); Journal of Early Modern Studies (S. Milancovici), Nuncius (F. Abbri).