- Rutkin, Darrel H.
- Ph.D
- Time period: 01.10.23 - 15.07.24
- Research title: From Medieval to Renaissance Astrology: Marsilio Ficino’s Astrological Writings and Practices
- Research Region: Western Europe
- n. a.
- n. a.
- Video Statement
1987: B.A. Honors at The University of Texas, Austin (Classics, Philosophy).
1994: M.A. at Stanford University (Classics).
2000: Rome Prize, Lily Auchincloss Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Post-Classical Humanistic— Modern Italian Studies, American Academy in Rome.
2002: Ph.D. at Indiana University, Bloomington (History of Science, History).
2005: Hanna Kiel Fellow, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
2015-2017: Associate Lecturer in the History of Science, Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney (Two-year fixed-term contract).
2018-2023: Assistant Professor (Researcher typo A [RTD-a], non-tenure track), Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
H Darrel Rutkin is a historian of science and philosophy specializing in the history of medieval, Renaissance and early modern astrology, ca. 1250-1800. He is also very interested in the current state of astrological practice(s) in the West and around the world. His historical work focuses on astrology’s numerous relationships to science, theology and magic within their relevant conceptual, institutional, confessional, socio-political and cultural contexts over the longue durée. Among many other questions, he is concerned to establish astrology’s centrality to the premodern Aristotelian-Ptolemaic understanding of nature, ca. 1250-1600, both conceptually and institutionally. He then uses these structures—especially the patterns of their teaching at the finest premodern universities—to reveal the complex patterns of how astrology was marginalized and ultimately removed from the map of legitimate knowledge and practice during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, thereby becoming an esoteric discipline. He very deliberately approaches the history of astrology as an anthropologist would, by treating the historical actors as informants and providing thick descriptions of their theories and practices.
1987: B.A. Honors at The University of Texas, Austin (Classics, Philosophy).
1994: M.A. at Stanford University (Classics).
2000: Rome Prize, Lily Auchincloss Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Post-Classical Humanistic— Modern Italian Studies, American Academy in Rome.
2002: Ph.D. at Indiana University, Bloomington (History of Science, History).
2005: Hanna Kiel Fellow, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
2015-2017: Associate Lecturer in the History of Science, Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney (Two-year fixed-term contract).
2018-2023: Assistant Professor (Researcher typo A [RTD-a], non-tenure track), Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
H Darrel Rutkin is a historian of science and philosophy specializing in the history of medieval, Renaissance and early modern astrology, ca. 1250-1800. He is also very interested in the current state of astrological practice(s) in the West and around the world. His historical work focuses on astrology’s numerous relationships to science, theology and magic within their relevant conceptual, institutional, confessional, socio-political and cultural contexts over the longue durée. Among many other questions, he is concerned to establish astrology’s centrality to the premodern Aristotelian-Ptolemaic understanding of nature, ca. 1250-1600, both conceptually and institutionally. He then uses these structures—especially the patterns of their teaching at the finest premodern universities—to reveal the complex patterns of how astrology was marginalized and ultimately removed from the map of legitimate knowledge and practice during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, thereby becoming an esoteric discipline. He very deliberately approaches the history of astrology as an anthropologist would, by treating the historical actors as informants and providing thick descriptions of their theories and practices.
