The workshop has put in evidence the importance to take new perspectives on Copernicus and his oeuvre. The issue of the meeting was to take Copernicus’s synthesis of cosmological, practical-mathematical, economic and medical interests as a point of departure to reflect on the social settings of mathematical and economic practices in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity, in a context of cross-cultural transfers.

Speakers as Alberto Bardi (Tsinghua University, Beijing), Jonathan Regier (Università Ca' Foscari), and Helge Wendt (SFB980/MPIWG) have outlined that Copernicus was not only the author of the most relevant astronomical works of the Renaissance (De revolutionibus 1543), but also wrote and worked on practical fields ranging from monetary policy to land surveying and medicine. This prism of interests, far from being a unique case, continued and transformed well established scientific practices.

The transcultural dimension of Copernicus’ oeuvre was presented by Paul Hullmeine (Bayrische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich) and Razieh Mousavi (MPIWG), who comparing Copernicus’ writings to Late-Antique, medieval Arabic and Islamic texts could state long-lasting debates in cosmology and astronomy. Also, Philippe Debruise (Université Paris Diderot, Paris), Murtaza Chopra (Hebrew University), as well as Pietro D. Omodeo (Università Ca' Foscari) and Senthil Babu (French Institute of Pondicherry) could reveal the larger mathematical context, of which Copernicus was a part.