3 questions for… Visiting Professor Dr. Pietro Daniel Omodeo

23. Juni 2025

Pietro Daniel Omodeo (b. 1979), historian of science and philosophy, is Associate Professor at Ca' Foscari University. Expert in historical epistemology, he analyzes science philosophy, and power in early modernity. Author of works on Bruno, Galileo, and the Anthropocene, he bridges academia and public engagement.

1. What are your research topics and what are you currently working on?
I am a cultural historian of science teaching historical epistemology at Ca’ Foscari University Venice. I also direct the UNESCO Chair of Water Heritage and Sustainable Development in Venice (NICHE Center of Environmental Humanities), which investigates water and water knowledge as commons, and addresses the complex relation between hydrology and democracy. In the context of the Max Planck Partner Group The Water City (MPI of Geoanthropology Jena and Ca’ Foscari University Venice), I head a group that investigates waterscapes such as the Lagoon of Venice, the Valley of Mexico and the Kaveri Delta in India as comparable sites, affected by global processes which are at once economic, ecological, and epistemological. Moreover, I am part of the Verum Factum network of historical epistemologists working on political epistemology, understood as a critical reflection on the social roots and functions of science.

I have written widely across the fields of early modern science, political epistemology and critical science studies. I authored, among other publications, Copernicus in the Cultural Debates of the Renaissance: Reception, Legacy, Transformation (2014); Political Epistemology: The Problem of Ideology in Science Studies (2019); and Defending Descartes in Brandenburg-Prussia: The University of Frankfurt an der Oder in the Seventeenth Century (2022). Recent publications of mine touching upon hydrosociology comprise: Alberto Bardi, Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Justas Patkauskas (eds), Geoanthropology and Waterscapes (2025) and Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Pietro Consolandi (eds), The Anthropocene Waterscapes of Venice (2025). I am the director of the open-access series Knowledge Hegemonies in the Early Modern World: Sources and Interpretations (Edizioni Ca’ Foscari) and co-director of the series Political Epistemology (Springer Verlag).

My current research relates to the history of water knowledge with a special focus on Venice and early modernity. I investigate hydrology as part of broad bodies of knowledge, originally rooted in community life and vernacular practices, which have evolved through processes of abstraction and scientific codification. I particularly value the history of water knowledge and water culture as a contribution to the present-day environmental concerns, in which multiple disciplines are mobilized in search of adequate policies for climate change mitigation, adaptation and—most importantly—sustainability. Venice constitutes my primary object of inquiry, as a paradigm of natural, cultural and epistemic entwinement. Together with colleagues, researchers from various disciplines at the confluence of the humanities with the natural sciences, students, people from civil society and politics, members of cultural institutions and artists, I have been exploring the multiple dimensions of natural, socio-political and intellectual ecologies. At ILAS, I will work on a book on the political epistemology of the Anthropocene and the genesis of geoanthropological thinking (relative to the connection between nature and society), with a particular emphasis on historical hydrosociology.

2. What fascinates you about Liberal Arts & Sciences and how does your stay at ILAS enrich your research?
I am very glad of this opportunity to visit an academic center that connects the liberal arts and the sciences. I see it as a very timely endeavor. Indeed, bridging between the humanities and the various sciences is a necessary step vis-à-vis the challenges of our time, in which natural and cultural phenomena have become inextricably interwoven even at a geological and planetary level. The present conjuncture is marked by a polycrisis that affects societies as much as ecosystems and mentalities. This calls for novel paradigms and cultural imagination. New perspectives can only emerge from a courageous revision of disciplinary boundaries in a collaborative and transdisciplinary spirit. In light of these concerns, the ILAS program to bring together diverse methodologies and approaches to nature and culture is very promising. It is consonant with my aspiration to find adequate means to comprehend complex subjects such as the Anthropocene, geoanthropology and water epistemologies. I am looking forward to fruitful exchanges and novel insights from the Hamburg community. Also, I am eager to further the connection between Venice Environmental Humanities and Hamburg Liberal Arts and Sciences.

3. What projects do you have planned for your time at ILAS?
During my stay at ILAS, I will work on the political epistemology of the Anthropocene from a two-pronged theoretical and historical perspective:

1. a clarification of the historical-epistemological question of the Anthropocene, namely the desideratum of a natural-cultural paradigm that integrates different disciplinary approaches and histories—I will here take into account the emergent paradigm of hydrosociology and connect it with debates in the philosophy of science related to abstraction, representation and the transformation of reality;

2. a historical inquiry into the global contextualism of modern geoanthropological thinking by especially looking at historical cases of exchange across continents and cultures.

I also envisage a seminar, to be held together with Prof. Dr. Matthias Schemmel, in which students will learn about the theoretical and historical problems of a global cultural history of science.