Article ID: CBB001024005

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

unapi

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.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001024005/

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Authors & Contributors
Yale, Elizabeth E.
Roos, Anna Marie Eleanor
Grell, Chantal
Grażyna Jurkowlaniec
Kroupa, Sebestian
Kraemer, Fabian
Concepts
Correspondence and corresponding
Scientific communities; interprofessional relations
Communication within scientific contexts
Natural history
Manuscripts
Books
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
Early modern
19th century
Enlightenment
20th century
Places
Great Britain
Italy
France
Netherlands
Germany
Europe
Institutions
Royal Society of London
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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