Navigating origin stories: the mariner's compass as a narrative instrument

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• Paola Bertucci (Yale University)
• Thursday 27 November 2025, 15:30-17:00
• Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ahmad Elabbar.

Anita McConnell Lecture

This lecture traces the afterlife of a man who never lived: Flavio Gioia, the supposed inventor of the mariner’s compass. Born from a sixteenth-century translation error, Gioia lived for centuries on the printed page as a mythical figure representing European ingenuity. His fabricated existence reveals how print culture produced what might be called predigital hallucinations – errors that circulated so widely as to harden into truth. By following Gioia’s existence through encyclopedias, treatises, and national rivalries from the sixteenth century into the early twentieth, the lecture examines how origin stories about navigation turned invention narratives into moral geographies of civilization.

This talk is part of the Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science series.

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