Historia

Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9287437
AutoresLauren Kassell (0000-0002-6415-4354, University of Cambridge, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen20
Número1
Páginas196-198
Fecha de publicación2007-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial History of Medicine (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0951-631X • E-ISSN: 1477-4666
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/shm/hkm029
OpenAlexW2088421280
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas18

In the summer of 2003, eleven scholars spent a month together at the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin. They had been assembled to consider the meaning of ‘historia’ in early modern Europe. Lorraine Daston provided the theme and the funding, Nancy Siraisi and Gianna Pomata directed the workshop. This splendid book is the result. Historia does not translate simply as ‘history’. Its meaning extended from the study of human actions to the study of the natural world; this is the meaning of ‘history’ that we retain in our concepts of natural history and case history. Between c . 1450 and 1750, the usages of historia proliferated and at the same time its explanatory status was enhanced. In the early Renaissance it referred to particular materials compiled from other sources or assembled through direct observation. From the late sixteenth century, historiae came increasingly to prioritise first-hand observation over learned sources, and this mode became a common feature of natural historical and medical writings. To study historia , as these essays so admirably demonstrate, is to study the play of erudition and empiricism in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. This recovery of the meaning and fortunes of historia is the agenda that Pomata and Siraisi set for the volume in their masterful introduction

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Early Modern Europe · Empiricism · Epistemology · Literature · Meaning (existential · Natural (archaeology · Natural history · The Renaissance · Theme (computing · Classics · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Medicine · Philosophy