Experience Is Better than Knowledge

Premodern Ocean Science and the Blue Humanities

Bibliographic Data

ID3856423
AuthorsSteve Mentz (0000-0002-7118-798X, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume27
Issue4
Pages433-442
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueConfigurations (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1063-1801 • E-ISSN: 1080-6520
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/con.2019.0029
OpenAlexW2979858562
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited11

The development of early modern marine science brought intellectual innovations into contact with physical encounters in oceanic environments. Many important scientific developments took shape from the decks of ships, or during the disorienting moments when human bodies immersed themselves in salt water. Prolonged physical encounters with the ocean were essential to intellectual history. This essay joins together experiential elements of premodern science with modern surfing culture and in particular a body-surfing excursion featuring a group of humanities academics in California in 2014. Both the early modern and the twenty-first-century histories reveal the interplay of watery encounters and scientific thinking

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Excursion · Experiential learning · Ocean science · Pedagogy · Political science · Salt water · Scientific thinking · Sociology · Adventure Sports and Sensation Seeking · History · Law · Philosophy · Polar Research and Ecology · Geology · Oceanography

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