Vision was an important area of investigation at the Academia Naturæ Curiosorum, the later Leopoldina, throughout the second half of the seventeenth century since its foundation. This talk seeks to explore the range of activities that the members of the Academy carried out in studying the mechanism of vision, and ask: Why did vision fascinate the Academia Naturæ Curiosorum? As a learned society whose members were mostly medical practitioners, how did its subjects and methods of study differ from those of other academic societies at that time? Moreover, the dysfunction of the eye received particular examinations from the Academy, which called into question the reliability and trustworthy of the sense sight. The tension between vision and certainty not only concerned medicine as a discipline, but also the very foundation of knowledge.

Prof. Dr. Rainer Godel and Leopoldina member Prof. Dr. Dieter Hoffmann cordially invite you to this lecture.

Code of Conduct
Please note the following instructions during the event:

• Turn your camera off. The speakers will share their screen to make their presentation visible.
• The microphone should be switched off during the lecture in order to avoid background noise.
• In the subsequent discussion, requests to speak can be displayed via the chat. The moderator maintains a list of speakers according to the running order in the chat and invokes each one to pose their question.
• In the discussion, the camera can be turned on. Especially when speaking, this is desirable so that the speakers can also see who is asking the questions / comments.