Tracing the Movement of Knowledge across Vast Distances and Long Temporal Spans

Transfers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
Pamela H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Max Planck ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Trade And Exchange

A research group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science on “Itineraries of Materials, Recipes, Techniques, and Knowledge in the Early Modern World” held a series of workshops (2014–2015) on the movement of knowledge (materials, techniques, objects) across Eurasia, resulting in an edited volume. Participants articulated a framework of “entangled itineraries,” “material complexes,” and “nodes of convergence” by which historians might follow routes of knowledge-making extending over very long distances and/or great spans of time. The key concepts are (1) “material complex” denoting the constellation of substances, practices, techniques, beliefs, and values that accrete as knowledge around materials; (2) the “relational field,” the social, intellectual, economic, emotional domain formed by a “node of convergence”—often a hub of trade and exchange—within which a material complex crystalizes; and (3) “itineraries,” or the routes taken by materials through which they stabilize and/ or transform.

scholarly journals Ideals and Practices of Rationality – An Interview with Lorraine Daston

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-188
Author(s):  
Michael Trevor Bycroft ◽  
Michael Trevor Bycroft
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Max Planck ◽  
Classical Probability ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

Lorraine Daston is a historian of science based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where she has directed a research group since 1995. Her career spans five decades and has included award-winning monographs such as Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (1988), Wonders and the Order of Nature (with Katherine Park, 1998), and Objectivity (with Peter Galison, 2007), as well as a large number of collective works. She visited the University of Warwick in March 2017 to deliver the Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture. In a wide-ranging interview, she spoke about the evolution of the discipline of the history of science; the research programme known as historical epistemology; the nuts and bolts of collaboration in the humanities; her current research on archives in the sciences and the humanities; and the transience of scientific theories.

Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
State University ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

The Oxford History of Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
North West ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400–1400? How was the past understood in religious, social, and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes chapters on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.

La Storia dell’Età Moderna nelle „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Biblioteken“: lo specchio di un secolo di ricerche

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
Irene Fosi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Papal Court

AbstractThe article examines the topics relating to the early modern period covered by the journal „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken“ in the hundred volumes since its first publication. Thanks to the index (1898–1995), published in 1997 and the availability online on the website perpectivia.net (since 1958), it is possible to identify constants and changes in historiographical interests. Initially, the focus was on the publication of sources in the Vatican Secret Archive (now the Vatican Apostolic Archive) relating to the history of Germany. The topics covered later gradually broadened to include the history of the Papacy, the social composition of the Curia and the Papal court and Papal diplomacy with a specific focus on nunciatures, among others. Within a lively historiographical context, connected to historical events in Germany in the 20th century, attention to themes and sources relating to the Middle Ages continues to predominate with respect to topics connected to the early modern period.

scholarly journals A scientist is almost always a collectioner

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Andrey Vaganov
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Science Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physiological Phenomenon ◽  
Research Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
Blank Spot

Collecting as a social, psychological and even physiological phenomenon has not been devoted to much serious research. Those that exist focus on the phenomenology of collections. The phenomenon of collecting and collecting remains largely unexplored. The topic of “collectors-scientists” is, in general, a blank spot in the study of science and the social history of science. Nevertheless, there is quite legitimately a special concept - “research collection”. For example, the collection of collections for Goethe was one of the ways of his scientific work. As a result of this work, Goethe became an expert in the field of knowledge, the objects of which he collected. This kind of rapprochement between science and collecting seems to be an interdependent process. Not only collecting in the highest phase of its development is being melted into a scientific occupation, but also an occupation in science has all the features inherent in project collecting. The article makes an attempt to establish some ontological patterns inherent in this process, to outline the paths to the natural science study of the phenomenon of scientists-collectors.

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