Marco Storni - Research

My work explores early modern science and philosophy from different angles. These are my favorite research themes:

1. The development of scientific knowledge in the eighteenth century

Since my PhD, I have sought to understand the historical development of early modern scientific knowledge. Through the study of Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) and his exchanges with other authors, I have addressed key issues in the history of science and epistemology, highlighting relevant aspects of the mechanisms of knowledge construction and circulation. Combining insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge and microhistory, I have suggested that new narratives of scientific modernity might be produced by focusing on the individual trajectories of savants, as well as on episodes of controversy.

Research results:

Storni, M. 2024. “Beyond Descartes: Noël Regnault and Eighteenth-Century French Cartesianism.” Perspectives on Science 32.2: 230-261. https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00623
Storni, M. 2024. “Maupertuis and the Reshaping of Natural History in Eighteenth-Century France.” Perspectives on Science 32.5: 650-669. https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00618
Storni, M. 2022. Maupertuis. Le philosophe, l’académicien, le polémiste. Paris: Honoré Champion.
Storni, M. 2022. “Experience, Analogy and Mechanism in Maupertuis’s Theory of Generation.” In Mechanism, Life and Mind in Modern Natural Philosophy, edited by C. T. Wolfe, P. Pecere and A. Clericuzio, 155-174. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07036-5_10

For the full list of my publications, click here.

2. The history of scientific academies

As part of my interest in early modern science, I have worked extensively on scientific institutions, particularly academies. I have investigated the strategies employed by the institutions to regulate the intellectual life of their members. I have been particularly interested in how persistent disagreements were settled in academic settings, and have examined this question through the case study of the controversy over the shape of the Earth in the Paris Academy of Sciences (1733-1740). I have shown that institutional authority encouraged the reconciliation of opposing positions in order to preserve an image of the unity of the academic community and the prestige of its most eminent members. More recently, I have got interested in the progressive closure of the modern academic community and in the historical fate of marginalised epistemic communities.

Research results:

Storni, M. 2025. “Resisting Newton in Provincial France, 1750s-1770s: Opposition from the Margins to the Parisian Academic Community.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 109, 1: 21-30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.12.004
Storni, M. 20xx. “The Eighteenth-Century Controversy on the Shape of the Earth: A Political-Epistemological Approach.” In Early Modern Political Epistemology, edited by P. D. Omodeo and S. Babu. Leiden-Boston: Brill (forthcoming).
Storni, M. 2021. “La stratégie rhétorique de Maupertuis dans la controverse sur la forme de la Terre.” In Désordres modernes. Contester, travailler, refonder l’ordre par les pratiques sociales et artistiques, edited by S. Gosselin-Rodière and A. Schoenecker, 249-264. Paris: Hermann [link].
Storni, M. 2020. “Cartography, Geodesy, and the Heliocentric Theory: Yves Simonin’s Unpublished Papers.” Centaurus 63, 1: 192-209. https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12351

For the full list of my publications, click here.

3. The role of objects in early modern scientific practice

Since 2018, I have been working on the role of material objects in the elaboration of scientific knowledge. I have inquired into the epistemic status of scientific tools, the bodily skills required by scientific work, and the impact of innovation on everyday life practice. Building on recent historiographical works on “thrift,” I have studied the history of a few scientific instruments (clocks, pneumatic machines) and their contexts of use, in order to display the intertwinement between the natural-philosophical and the economic dimension.

A short presentation of my research on Denis Papin (2021)

Research results:

Storni, M. 20xx. “Time Thrift and Economic Science in the Eighteenth Century.” Science in Context (accepted).
Bernasconi, G. and Storni, M. (eds.). 2025. Early Modern Fire: Science, Technology, and the Urban Space. Leiden: Brill.
Storni, M. 2023. “The Pulse Watch and the Physician’s Senses: John Floyer on the Quantification of the Body.” In The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Intersections of Medicine and Philosophy, edited by J. Braga and S. Guidi, 241-263. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15725-7_10
Storni, M. 2021. “Denis Papin’s Digester and Its Eighteenth-Century European Circulation.” The British Journal for the History of Science 54, 4: 443-463. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000698
Storni, M. 2020. “Clocks and Timekeeping in Lavoisier’s Experiments on Animal Respiration: The Chemical Revolution, Its Material Culture and Taken-for-Granted Knowledge.” In Material Histories of Time. Objects and Practices, 14th-19th Centuries, edited by G. Bernasconi and S. Thürigen, 187-200. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110625035-013

For the full list of my publications, click here.