About This Site
Domenico Remps (c.1620-c.1699), A Cabinet of Curiosity, 1690s. Oil on canvas, 99x137cm. Museo dell'Opificio delle Pietre Dure (Florence).
Courtesy of the Web Gallery of Art (www.wga.hu).
Courtesy of the Web Gallery of Art (www.wga.hu).
Cultures of Early Modern Science
This website offers a cabinet of intellectual curiosity: it showcases the research of second-year undergraduate University of Groningen students into cultural histories of early modern science. Using a cultural historical perspective, students seek to understand how natural knowledge was historically produced, in which cultural contexts, and by whom. Over the course of a semester-long course, they examined ideas, practices, sites, and modes of early modern knowledge-making and "scientific" interaction.
Towards a Cultural History of Early Modern Science, ca. 1450-1750
What do grave robbers, alchemists, or Jesuits have to do with modern science? Why could no self-respecting seventeenth-century natural philosopher skip visiting the Delft workshop of uneducated merchant Antoni van Leeuwenhoek? How did Gallileo's skill as a courtier aid his science? How did new forms of military engineering impact the civilian populations of besieged cities? To what extent did a given cultural milieu influence early modern scientific practices? To answer any of these questions satisfactorily, we must consider not only early modern "science", but also the cultural contexts within early modern "science" was practiced.
Over the course of the early modern era -- the period from roughly 1450 to 1750 -- the ways in which Europeans of all classes used, viewed, discussed, and communicated about the natural world were transformed by global discoveries, and by inventions such as the printing press, gunpowder, more accurate clocks, or calculus. This process of transformation has traditionally been called the "Scientific Revolution". However, this was a revolution which occurred gradually, over the course of several centuries, and which was closely associated with broader social, political, cultural, theological, intellectual, and even environmental developments. These included the centralization of courts, practice of patronage and clientelism, new forms of warfare, popularity of letter-writing, (Counter)-Reformation, Little Ice Age, or the establishment of (scientific) academies. Fundamental scientific practices, such as counting, observing, describing, classifying, collecting, or experimenting, also developed over the course of the early modern era in particular cultural contexts. As a result, early modern "scientific" thought and practice can also be viewed as cultural history. Early modern scientific cultures were dynamic -- involved in innovating ideas, methods and instruments we regularly use today -- yet also contingent: they were also products of their eras.
The Early Modern Curiosity Cabinet (Wunderkammer / Raritäten-Kabinett)
The image above, a trompe-d'oeil painting of a seventeenth-century curiosity cabinet, offers a good metaphor for this site, which collects and shares students' research into early modern cultures of science. Collecting or viewing natural artefacts which inspired wonder or curiosity, whether in a cabinet of curiosities, a museum, or a garden, was one way in which broader segments of the early modern population experienced or participated in "science". (A great deal has been written on early modern cabinets of curiosities: here is a good introductory essay on the subject by a curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Early modern curiosity cabinets stood at the intersection of many of the era's distinctive developments: global discoveries, humanist learning, the growth of trade and commerce, the rise of universities and centralized courts, neo-Platonic cosmologies of macro- and microcosm (the idea that similar patterns are produced at all levels of the cosmos), artistic innovation, and of course natural philosophy, or what we today call "science". Cabinets and museums containing encyclopaedic collections of natural specimens were among the major sites for natural investigations and the communication of natural knowledge before the age of laboratories. We hope that this website can also provide a laboratory and stimulus for thinking about the various ways and various cultural contexts in which the natural world was historically discussed, observed, and experienced.
-- dr. M. K. Williams (docent)
Last revised 15 January 2013
Further reading on curiosity cabinets:
- Oliver Impey and A. Macgregor, eds. The Origins of Museums: the Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1985).
- Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750 (New York, 2007).
- Klaas van Berkel, Citaten uit het boek der natuur: Opstellen over Nederlandse wetenschapsgeschiedenis (Amsterdam, 1998), 85-110.
- Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994).
- __, “An Artificial Nature: Anatomy Theaters, Botanical Gardens, and Natural History Collections,” in The Cambridge History of Early Modern Science, ed. Katharine Park and Lorraine J.Daston (Cambridge, U.K., 2005).
- Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants & Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York, 2002).
- G. Olmi, 'From the Marvellous to the Commonplace: Natural History Museums, 16th–18th Centuries', in R. Mazzolini (ed.), Non-Verbal Communication in Science Prior to 1900 (1993).
- Ellinoor Bergvelt, Renée Kistemaker, eds. De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585-1735 (Zwolle, 1992).
- Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, "From Mastery of the World to Mastery of Nature: the Kunstkammer, Politics and Science", in: id., The Mastery of Nature (Princeton, 1993).
- A. Grote (ed.), Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450 bis 1800 (Berlin: 1994).
- The Journal of the History of Collections (Oxford Journals).
- Groningen University Museum ( http://www.rug.nl/science-and-society/university-museum/ )
Towards a Cultural History of Early Modern Science, ca. 1450-1750
What do grave robbers, alchemists, or Jesuits have to do with modern science? Why could no self-respecting seventeenth-century natural philosopher skip visiting the Delft workshop of uneducated merchant Antoni van Leeuwenhoek? How did Gallileo's skill as a courtier aid his science? How did new forms of military engineering impact the civilian populations of besieged cities? To what extent did a given cultural milieu influence early modern scientific practices? To answer any of these questions satisfactorily, we must consider not only early modern "science", but also the cultural contexts within early modern "science" was practiced.
Over the course of the early modern era -- the period from roughly 1450 to 1750 -- the ways in which Europeans of all classes used, viewed, discussed, and communicated about the natural world were transformed by global discoveries, and by inventions such as the printing press, gunpowder, more accurate clocks, or calculus. This process of transformation has traditionally been called the "Scientific Revolution". However, this was a revolution which occurred gradually, over the course of several centuries, and which was closely associated with broader social, political, cultural, theological, intellectual, and even environmental developments. These included the centralization of courts, practice of patronage and clientelism, new forms of warfare, popularity of letter-writing, (Counter)-Reformation, Little Ice Age, or the establishment of (scientific) academies. Fundamental scientific practices, such as counting, observing, describing, classifying, collecting, or experimenting, also developed over the course of the early modern era in particular cultural contexts. As a result, early modern "scientific" thought and practice can also be viewed as cultural history. Early modern scientific cultures were dynamic -- involved in innovating ideas, methods and instruments we regularly use today -- yet also contingent: they were also products of their eras.
The Early Modern Curiosity Cabinet (Wunderkammer / Raritäten-Kabinett)
The image above, a trompe-d'oeil painting of a seventeenth-century curiosity cabinet, offers a good metaphor for this site, which collects and shares students' research into early modern cultures of science. Collecting or viewing natural artefacts which inspired wonder or curiosity, whether in a cabinet of curiosities, a museum, or a garden, was one way in which broader segments of the early modern population experienced or participated in "science". (A great deal has been written on early modern cabinets of curiosities: here is a good introductory essay on the subject by a curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Early modern curiosity cabinets stood at the intersection of many of the era's distinctive developments: global discoveries, humanist learning, the growth of trade and commerce, the rise of universities and centralized courts, neo-Platonic cosmologies of macro- and microcosm (the idea that similar patterns are produced at all levels of the cosmos), artistic innovation, and of course natural philosophy, or what we today call "science". Cabinets and museums containing encyclopaedic collections of natural specimens were among the major sites for natural investigations and the communication of natural knowledge before the age of laboratories. We hope that this website can also provide a laboratory and stimulus for thinking about the various ways and various cultural contexts in which the natural world was historically discussed, observed, and experienced.
-- dr. M. K. Williams (docent)
Last revised 15 January 2013
Further reading on curiosity cabinets:
- Oliver Impey and A. Macgregor, eds. The Origins of Museums: the Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1985).
- Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750 (New York, 2007).
- Klaas van Berkel, Citaten uit het boek der natuur: Opstellen over Nederlandse wetenschapsgeschiedenis (Amsterdam, 1998), 85-110.
- Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994).
- __, “An Artificial Nature: Anatomy Theaters, Botanical Gardens, and Natural History Collections,” in The Cambridge History of Early Modern Science, ed. Katharine Park and Lorraine J.Daston (Cambridge, U.K., 2005).
- Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants & Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York, 2002).
- G. Olmi, 'From the Marvellous to the Commonplace: Natural History Museums, 16th–18th Centuries', in R. Mazzolini (ed.), Non-Verbal Communication in Science Prior to 1900 (1993).
- Ellinoor Bergvelt, Renée Kistemaker, eds. De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585-1735 (Zwolle, 1992).
- Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, "From Mastery of the World to Mastery of Nature: the Kunstkammer, Politics and Science", in: id., The Mastery of Nature (Princeton, 1993).
- A. Grote (ed.), Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450 bis 1800 (Berlin: 1994).
- The Journal of the History of Collections (Oxford Journals).
- Groningen University Museum ( http://www.rug.nl/science-and-society/university-museum/ )