Article ID: CBB949959104

Archives and the Boundaries of Early Modern Science (2016)

unapi

This contribution argues that the study of early modern archives suggests a new agenda for historians of early modern science. While in recent years historians of science have begun to direct increased attention toward the collections amassed by figures and institutions traditionally portrayed as proto-scientific, archives proliferated across early modern Europe, emerging as powerful tools for creating knowledge in politics, history, and law as well as natural philosophy, botany, and more. The essay investigates the methods of production, collection, organization, and manipulation used by English statesmen and Crown officers such as Keeper of the State Papers Thomas Wilson and Secretary of State Joseph Williamson to govern their disorderly collections. Their methods, it is shown, were shared with contemporaries seeking to generate and manage other troves of evidence and in fact reflect a complex ecosystem of imitation and exchange across fields of inquiry. These commonalities suggest that historians of science should look beyond the ancestors of modern scientific disciplines to examine how practices of producing knowledge emerged and migrated throughout cultures of learning in Europe and beyond. Creating such a map of knowledge production and exchange, the essay concludes, would provide a renewed and expansive ambition for the field.

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Authors & Contributors
Bhatti, Anil
Kharlamova, Vera I.
Hülmbauer, Cornelia
Yaneva, Albena
Valderrama, Ignacio Miguel Pascual
Podgorny, Irian
Concepts
Historiography
History of science, as a discipline
Collections
Libraries and archives
Methodology
Global history
Time Periods
Early modern
19th century
Modern
20th century
18th century
Medieval
Places
Europe
Great Britain
United Kingdom
England
Scotland
Spain
Institutions
Oxford Botanic Garden
University of Oxford (UK)
Wolfenbüttel. Herzog August Bibliothek
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