Yuan Tao

My project is about the pictorial imaginations in early modern theories of sound in the works by late 16th and 17th century Jesuit authors in Europe and China, and asks the epistemic question of how the authors’ imaginations, their theories and practices mutually shape each other. It sheds light on how pictorial imaginations and visual models, being intrinsically historical, emerged from particular practices undertaken for specific goals and under certain constraints and played a crucial role in the construction of early modern theories of sound. With its global focus, my dissertation also attempts a first comparative study of the knowledge circulation of European theories of sound in 17th century China.

Affiliation: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science