Marco Storni - Research

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

1. Natural philosophy in eighteenth-century France

A major strand of my research examines the reception and transformation of Cartesian and Newtonian natural philosophies in eighteenth-century France. I have explored how these traditions interacted with other intellectual currents, particularly Leibnizianism and Aristotelianism, and how they shaped scientific education and academic culture.

I have focused on the figure of Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, one of the earliest supporters of Newtonianism in France. My monograph Maupertuis. Le philosophe, l’académicien, le polémiste (Honoré Champion, 2022), based on my doctoral dissertation, received the Fondation Del Duca–Institut de France Prize in 2023. In a series of papers, I examined Maupertuis’s contributions to debates on animal generation and natural history, showing how his reflections on matter, life, and reproduction helped reshape eighteenth-century understandings of nature.

More recently, I have extended this work to the broader history of Cartesianism in eighteenth-century France. My forthcoming monograph, provisionally titled Cartesian Natural Philosophy in France, 1730–1800 (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment/Livepool UP, invited for publication in 2027), argues that Cartesian natural philosophy remained a dynamic and influential intellectual tradition long after the rise of Newtonianism, adapting to new scientific, philosophical, and institutional contexts.

Research results:

Storni, M. 2022. Maupertuis. Le philosophe, l’académicien, le polémiste. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2022, pp. 306, ISBN 978-2-7453-5672-7.
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. 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. 2025. “Knowledge in Motion: The Circulation of Maupertuis’s Discours sur les différentes figures des astres (1732) between Switzerland and Germany.” In Philosophical Reviews in German Territories (1668-1799), edited by Marco Sgarbi, 57-70. Florence: Firenze University Press. https://doi.org/10.36253/979-12-215-0573-3.04

For the full list of my publications, click here.

2. Scientific practice, techniques, and the representation of knowledge

Since 2018, I have developed a research interest in the material culture of science, focusing on the role of technical objects, experimental practices, and artisanal expertise in the production of knowledge. My work highlights the ways in which scientific knowledge emerged not only from theoretical reflection but also from interactions with instruments, materials, and practical forms of know-how. One example is my research on Denis Papin’s digester, where I traced the invention, circulation, and changing uses of the instrument across contexts ranging from experimental science to philanthropic projects. This work shows how technical objects can actively shape scientific inquiry and connect questions of knowledge production with broader concerns about utility, innovation, and resource management.

I have also explored the survival of what may be called “artisanal epistemologies” throughout the eighteenth century. Focusing particularly on the arts of fire, I argue that many forms of knowledge continued to rely on practical skills, embodied experience, and tacit expertise that resisted complete theoretical formalization. My work demonstrates how measurement and standardization often emerged from technical procedures and material practices before being incorporated into formal scientific frameworks.

A related aspect of my research concerns the visual and textual representation of scientific knowledge. I have examined how time was measured and represented in medical and chemical practice, linking changes in measuring devices—from mechanical clocks to hourglasses—to broader transformations in experimental procedures, visual conventions, and scientific communication. These studies show that images and representational techniques were not merely tools for recording knowledge; they played an active role in shaping how scientific phenomena were understood, formalized, and transmitted.

Research results:

Bernasconi, G. and Storni, M. (eds.). 2025. Early Modern Fire: Science, Technology, and the Urban Space. Leiden: Brill, pp. 376.
Storni, M. 2026. “Governing the Experimental Body: Codification, Delegation, and the Economy of Practice in the Early Modern Period.” In The Legal Anatomy of the Body, edited by Mauro Balestrieri and Alice Cauduro, 89-111. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-26434-3_4
Storni, M. 2023. “Time Thrift and Economic Science in the Eighteenth Century.” Science in Context 36, 2: 175-191. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889725000468.
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.

3. Scientific institutions and the construction of expertise

A third area of my research investigates the role of scientific institutions in shaping knowledge and epistemic authority in the age of Enlightenment. I have studied the policies through which academies regulated research practices, organized debates, and established standards of scientific legitimacy. A particular focus of this work has been the controversy over the figure of the Earth at the Paris Academy between 1733 and 1740, which reveals the institutional mechanisms through which scientific disagreements were managed and resolved.

More recently, I have turned to the history of expertise and the changing boundaries of scientific communities during the eighteenth century. I argue that the consolidation of academic authority depended not only on internal consensus but also on sustained engagement with heterodox ideas and actors positioned at the margins of learned institutions. By examining how academicians responded to critics, dissenters, and proponents of allegedly outdated theories, I show that scientific authority was constructed through processes of inclusion and exclusion that helped define legitimate forms of knowledge and expertise.

Beyond my work on academies, I have participated in several international projects on the history of scientific institutions, particularly astronomical observatories. Reflecting this broader interest, I recently co-edited, with G. Bernasconi and I. Chinnici, Astronomical Observatories and Chronometry, 18th–20th Century: Studies in Honour of Paolo Brenni (Springer, 2025), which explores the role of observatories in the development of modern scientific practices across a wide chronological and geographical range.

Research results:

G. Bernasconi, I. Chinnici and M. Storni (eds.). 2025. Astronomical Observatories and Chronometry. Studies in Honor of Paolo Brenni. Cham: Springer, pp. 292. ISBN 978-3-031-95873-1.
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. 2025. “The Eighteenth-Century Controversy on the Shape of the Earth: A Political-Epistemological Approach.” In Science and Praxis: Historical Cases of Political Epistemology, edited by P. D. Omodeo, S. Babu D. e C. Zittel, 222-246. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004117785_010
Storni, M. 2020. “Cartography, Geodesy, and the Heliocentric Theory: Yves Simonin’s Unpublished Papers.” Centaurus 63.1, 2020: 192-209. https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12351