The principal goal of the seminar is to discuss the impact of the printing technology and of the emergence of a market of printed books on the scientific practice and development in Europe. The seminar begins with an overview concerned with the practice of production of scientific texts before the coming of the printing press in the Western environment and with an investigation concerned with the first phase of diffusion of the printing press. In the following, mechanisms of regulation of the book market will be investigated as well. In this respect, questions related to authorship and censorship will be in the focus. Finally, the market of scientific book as well as a specific section dedicated to the academic book market of the early modern period will be the last subjects.

The seminar also aims to furnish the intellectual instruments to deepen the specific case of production of university textbooks used for an introduction in geocentric astronomy at the faculties of liberal arts of Europe especially during the sixteenth century.