Floris Solleveld (Author)
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Volume: 46
Issue: 1
Pages: 92-113
Publication date: 2023
Language: English
Language was never studied by linguists (or philologists) alone. The greater part of the languages of the world was first known in the West through the reports of missionaries, explorers, and colonial administrators, and what they documented reflected their specific interests. Missionaries wrote catechisms, primers, dictionaries, and Bible translations (especially Lord's Prayers); for explorers and administrators, language was one aspect among many to cover in their accounts of faraway regions. Peoples were identified by their language; toponyms served for geographic description; names of plants and animals were gathered together with specimens and images of plants and animals. In this context, linguistic materials were equally described as “specimens.” This article investigates the various ways in which language material was used and conceived of as a specimen, and the global trajectories of these “specimens.” Especially the role of naturalist explorers deserves closer attention in this regard. What they did, throughout the late 18th and 19th century, was gathering language material as one kind of specimen among others, Forster in the Pacific, Humboldt, Martius, and d'Orbigny in South America, and Peters in Mozambique. Two large-scale expeditions from the mid-19th century stand out as examples: the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842), whose collections later filled the Smithsonian Institution, and the Austrian-Hungarian Novara expedition (1857–1859).
...MoreArticle Floris Solleveld (2023) Language in the Global History of Knowledge. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte (pp. 7-17).
Similar Citations
Thesis
Tian, Xiaoli;
(2011)
Relocating Science: Medical Missions and Western Medicine in Nineteenth-Century China
Book
Patrick Manning;
Abigail Owen;
(2018)
Knowledge in Translation: Global Patterns of Scientific Exchange, 1000-1800 CE
Chapter
Ronald Raminelli;
(2021)
Viagens filosóficas
Article
Parsons, Christopher M.;
Murphy, Kathleen S.;
(2012)
Ecosystems under Sail: Specimen Transport in the Eighteenth-Century French and British Atlantics
Chapter
McKhann, Charles F.;
Waxman, Alan;
(2011)
David Crockett Graham: American Missionary and Scientist in Sichuan, 1911--1948
Chapter
Huiyi Wu;
(2013)
Les traductions de François-Xavier Dentrecolles (1664-1741), missionnaire en Chine : localisation et circulation des savoirs
Article
Mervyn Eadie;
(2019)
Samuel Tissot’s Traité de l’épilepsie—250 years old
Article
Rienk Vermij;
(2018)
Translating, Adapting, Mutilating: Or, How to Make an Enlightenment Classic
Article
Bertucci, Paola;
(2013)
The In/visible Woman: Mariangela Ardinghelli and the Circulation of Knowledge between Paris and Naples in the Eighteenth Century
Essay Review
Dettelbach, Michael;
(2014)
Collecting Alexander von Humboldt
Chapter
de Deus Duarte, Maria;
(2012)
A Treasure-Hunt in Europe at War, or “a passage in the history of a heart”? The Translation of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Short Residence in Sweden into Portuguese
Chapter
Valles, Inmaculada Tamarit;
(2012)
Translation, Rewriting, Adaptation: The Itineraire descriptif de l'Espagne by Alexandre de Laborde
Chapter
Donato, Clorinda;
(2012)
The Travels and Translations of Marc-Antoine Eidous (1724--80), Encyclopedic Mediator of Enlightenment Texts
Article
Kurtz, Joachim;
(2003)
New Terms for Telling the Truth: Notes on the Formation of Modern Chinese Logical Terminology, 1886-1911
Article
Yulia Frumer;
(2018)
Translating Words, Building Worlds: Meteorology in Japanese, Dutch, and Chinese
Article
Alison E. Martin;
(2016)
Outward Bound: Women Translators and Scientific Travel Writing, 1780–1800
Book
Patrice Bret;
Jeanne Peiffer;
(2020)
La traduction comme dispositif de communication dans l'Europe moderne
Book
Laven, Mary;
(2011)
Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East
Article
Jing Tsu;
(2018)
Historians of Science Translating the History of Science: Blur versus Grit
Article
Cooper, Alix;
(2007)
Latin Words, Vernacular Worlds: Language, Nature, and the “Indigenous” in Early Modern Europe
Be the first to comment!