Scientiae 2025: Istanbul, 16-19 September, Annual Conference

Session

S.2.4. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Knowledge, Belief, and Cultural Imagination

17 Sept 2025, 11:00

ROOM 2 (Amfi 9) (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

Conveners

S.2.4. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Knowledge, Belief, and Cultural Imagination

• Brian Li
• Juan Acevedo (University of Lisbon)

Description

Chair: Matthijs Jonker

The Stone-Eaters: Lithophagy and Scholarly Fantasies of Ascetic Diets in Late Imperial China

Brian Li

17/09/2025, 11:00

Individual papers

This paper discusses lithophagy (i.e., the eating of stones), a common if not bizarre literary trope in late imperial China (ca. 1550–1800). Why were well-educated literati so keen on writing and circulating accounts of such a strange diet? This paper argues that lithophagy became an object of great symbolic importance to disaffected scholars, as this fascination had roots in Daoist hermetic...

Non-Western Science and Arts: A View from Latin America Through the Works of J.M. Briceño Guerrero

Juan Acevedo (University of Lisbon)

17/09/2025, 11:20

Individual papers

In The Labyrinth of Three Minotaurs (1994),Venezuelan philosopher J.M. Briceño Guerrero (1929–2014) posited a threefold scheme to explain the complexities of Latin American culture. Three intertwining inner “discourses” which took shape and were rooted from the late 15th to the mid-19th centuries through conquest, colonisation and independence wars. They manifest in every aspect of Latin...