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Article ID: CBB001024005

Marginalia, Commonplaces, and Correspondence: Scribal Exchange in Early Modern Science (2011)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 42
Pages: 193--202

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Marginalia Communication within scientific contexts Scientific communities; interprofessional relations Natural history Printing Manuscripts Correspondence and corresponding 17th century Evelyn, John Aubrey, John Ray, John

In recent years, historians of science have increasingly turned their attention to the print culture of early modern science. These studies have revealed that printing, as both a technology and a social and economic system, structured the forms and meanings of natural knowledge. Yet in early modern Europe, naturalists, including John Aubrey, John Evelyn, and John Ray, whose work is discussed in this paper, often shared and read scientific texts in manuscript either before or in lieu of printing. Scribal exchange, exemplified in the circulation of writings like commonplace books, marginalia, manuscript treatises, and correspondence, was the primary means by which communities of naturalists constructed scientific knowledge. Print and manuscript were necessary partners. Manuscript fostered close collaboration, and could be circulated relatively cheaply; but, unlike print, it could not reliably secure priority or survival for posterity. Naturalists approached scribal and print communication strategically, choosing the medium that best suited their goals at any given moment. As a result, print and scribal modes of disseminating information, constructing natural knowledge, and organizing communities developed in tandem. Practices typically associated with print culture manifested themselves in scribal texts and exchanges, and vice versa. Print culture cannot be hived off from scribal culture. Rather, in their daily jottings and exchanges, naturalists inhabited, and produced, one common culture of communication.

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Description Looks at the work of the early modern naturalists John Aubrey, John Evelyn, and John Ray.

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