Library and Laboratory: Trans-cultural Histories of Early Modern Science

Catalog description

The term "science" stems from the Latin word "scientia," meaning knowledge and skill, and in the early modern period this implied the synthesis of mind and hand. "Library and Laboratory" studies the connectivity of intellectual process and physical research in early modern knowledge production. It examines 17th-century botany and chymistry (developing scientific disciplines at the time) as comparative case studies in the interrelated activities of book collecting, note-taking, and experimentation, which practitioners considered as principal methods for investigating the natural world. Study of these two fields opens up new insights into the trans-cultural nature of early modern science and engages in the re-evaluation of Euro-centric narratives about the "Scientific Revolution." 17th-century European mercantilist globalization exerted a profound impact upon botany and chemistry as Europeans benefited from cross-cultural knowledge transfers involving people in North and South America, as well as in Africa, China, Japan, and SE Asia. In asking how these relationships contributed to the development of botany and chymistry, the seminar examines entangled networks of merchants, scholars, artisans, and indigenous communities, and tracks the material complex that informed operations in the library and laboratory linked epistemic spaces wherein texts, matter, and instruments functioned as tools in scientific knowledge-making.