Alberto Bardi（艾博）was invited to participate to the workshop Works in Progress in the History of Science at Ca’ Foscari University Venice. The event put together historians and philosophers of science from Europe and US. 艾博 presented a paper entitled Michael Psellos (1018–1081) on how to teach science to the Byzantine emperor.
Michael Psellos (1018–1081) is a Neoplatonic philosopher working in eleventh-century Constantinople. A prolific author, he engaged himself with the broadest range of topics of inquiry, and his polymathy has attracted a good deal of scholarly attention, but an overall assessment of his intellectual relevance is still lacking, especially in the history of science. Psellos’s interests for sciences have not yet received enough consideration. The place of mathematics in Psellos is relevant for the history of science for at least two reasons: his work shows how Greek mathematical knowledge was integrated in the epistemological concerns of a Christianized world, which considered itself the direct heir of the Roman Empire, and his philosophical ideals on mathematics originated a re-reading of Greek mathematical sources, which resulted in a discussion of the value of mathematics and the application of mathematics for topics of Anthropocene ante litteram, such as the end of the world. Psellos was ostracized by Constantinopolitan intellectuals, but to what extent was his methodology useful to later philosopher? Did his views on Plato reach Italy and influence fifteenth-century Florence the rebirth of Platonism? To what extent can his contribution be relevant to the history of Anthropocene? This paper discussed Psellos and his place in the history of science.
