Knowledge in Motion

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
The Hours ◽  
Modern Europe

This chapter focuses on “itineraries of matter,” or objects as traveling carriers of cultural practices and meanings, in the early modern world. It examines the role of red in the transmission of knowledge back and forth among European vernacular practitioners and text-oriented scholars in their production and reproduction of knowledge about natural things. To this end, the chapter takes us to the heat and dangers of vermillion production in early modern Europe: the hours of firing, stirring, stoking, hammering, chemical manipulation, and anxious waiting that produced the red pigments highly valued by painters and illuminators to bring blood to life. Vermillion production was dangerous and exacting, and yet its underlying techniques traveled rapidly across early modern Europe (and beyond) together with the webs of interlinked homologies—an entourage of lizards, blood, gold, alchemical formulas, and vernacular knowledge—which formed the foundations of early modern science.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

The High Point (I): The ‘Court Jews’ (1650–1713)

1997 ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
Jonathan Israel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
High Point ◽  
Effective Leaders ◽  
Modern Europe

This chapter assesses the age of the ‘Court Jew’ (1650–1713), which marked the zenith of Jewish influence in early modern Europe. The remarkable role of the Jews in European affairs at that time rested on the solid foundations laid during the Thirty Years War. By 1650, a scattered but socially closely intertwined élite of provisioners and financiers had emerged who were simultaneously agents of states and the effective leaders of Europe's Jewish communities. Sometimes, they showed a strong sense of commitment to one particular government, but this was, in fact, both unusual and untypical. Generally, Jewish court factors, or Hoffaktoren as they were known in Germany, lived outside the states which they served. Not infrequently, they acted for several governments at once. Most typical of all, the close collaboration and interdependence between them, interlocking with the correspondence between kehillot in different countries, made their activity more thoroughly international and specifically Jewish than the banking and contracting of later times. Assuredly, the system centred on Germany, Austria, and Holland, but it ramified far beyond these limits, exerting an appreciable influence also on affairs in Spain, Portugal, the Spanish Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Italy, England, and Ireland.

scholarly journals The Determinants of International Migration in Early Modern Europe: Evidence from the Maritime Sector, c. 1700–1800

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Alexander Klein ◽  
Jelle van Lottum
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Chain Migration ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Geographical Characteristics

ABSTRACTThis article offers the first multivariate regression study of international migration in early modern Europe. Using unique eighteenth-century data about maritime workers, we created a data set of migration flows among European countries to examine the role of factors related to geography, population, language, the market, and chain migration in explaining the migration of these workers across countries. We show that among all factors considered in our multivariate analysis, the geographical characteristics of the destination countries, size of port towns, and past migrations are among the most robust and quantitatively the most important factors influencing cross-country migration flows.

Miracles, Early Modern Science, and Rational Religion

2006 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
John's Gospel

Readers of the New Testament could be excused for thinking that there is little consistency in the manner in which miracles are represented in the Gospels. Those events typically identified as miracles are variously described as “signs” (semeia), “wonders” (terata), “mighty works” (dunameis), and, on occasion, simply “works” (erga). The absence of a distinct terminology for the miraculous suggests that the authors of the Gospels were not working with a formal conception of “miracle”—at least not in that Humean sense of a “contravention of the laws of nature,” familiar to modern readers. Neither is there a consistent position on the evidentiary role of these events. In the synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—Jesus performs miracles on account of the faith of his audience. In John's Gospel, however, it is the performance of miracles that elicits faith. Even in the fourth Gospel, moreover, the role of miracles as signs of Christ's divinity is not straightforward. Thus those who demand a miracle are castigated: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” Finally, signs and wonders do not provide unambiguous evidence of the sanctity of the miracle worker or of the truth of their teachings. Accordingly, the faithful were warned (in the synoptic Gospels at least) that “false Christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders [in order] to deceive.”

Muck, Mummies and Medicine: Disgust in Early Modern Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-65
Author(s):  
Sarah-Maria Schober
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This essay shows that early modern practices that used human bodily matter cannot be – as hitherto – explained by the absence of the emotion of disgust nor as being conducted in spite of disgust. Instead, it proposes to read those practices’ changing history as part of the history of the ‘paradox of disgust’. Four case studies (on anatomy, excrement, mummies and skulls) demonstrate that disgust was highly productive: it attracted fascination, allowed physicians to fashion themselves, and was even believed capable of healing. Over time and for complex reasons, however, the productive side of disgust declined. Combining current approaches in the history of emotions and material culture studies, this essay sets out not only to propose a new narrative for the changing role of disgust in early modern science and societies, but also to explore how variations in settings and human intervention changed the way emotions were used and perceived.

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