Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters

Philip consults the Cometographia.

Kim introduces the union catalogue.

CofK Research Fellow, Philip Beeley, and Editor, Kim McLean-Fiander, have recently returned from Poland after participating in a conference on Johannes Hevelius: The Burgher of Gdańsk and his Work. Hosted by the Gdańsk Scientific Society on 24-25 November, and taking place in the splendid historic setting of the Main Town Hall, the conference was organised to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the birth of one of the city’s most famous sons, the astronomer, instrument maker, inventor, brewer, printing-house owner, and town councillor, Johannes Hevelius (1611-87).

The conference opened with a special viewing of some of the Hevelian treasures of the Polish Academy of Sciences Library, including the Cometographia. His life and works were then examined from a wide range of perspectives by speakers from Poland, France, Italy, and the UK on topics such as the correlations between Hevelius’s astronomical observations in Gdańsk and those taken by Jean Picard on the same day in Paris; the controversy which arose between Hevelius and Adrien Auzout over systems for tracking comet paths; Hevelius’s work as an inventor of scientific instruments and the pendulum clock; his curriculum whilst attending the Gdańsk Academic Gymnasium; and his vocational experiences as city councillor, brewer, and printing-house owner. After a private viewing of the Main Town Hall’s excellent exhibition Johannes Hevelius and Gdańsk of his Times, Philip opened Friday afternoon’s session with a paper on ‘Hevelius, Hartlib, and Wallis: Early Modern Ideals of Scientific Collaboration’, which argued that this tripartite correspondence between Oxford, London, and Danzig exemplified, as no other, the ideals of the Republic of Letters: intellectual collaboration and exchange as a means to promote the growth of knowledge. Drawing on examples from these and other correspondents within Hevelius’s circle, Kim then demonstrated our forthcoming digital union catalogue of intellectual correspondence, revealing how it allows researchers not only to locate often elusive and dispersed early modern letters, but also to interrogate them in new and exciting ways.

Kim and Philip would like to thank their Polish hosts, in particular Professor Marian Turek and his wife Liz, for their warm hospitality and the invitation to attend the conference in this beautiful Pomeranian city.

The Early Modern Center of the University of California at Santa Barbara invites paper proposals for their eleventh annual conference, Early Modern Social Networks, 1500-1800. The conference will take place on March 16-17, 2012 at UCSB, and will feature keynote speakers Ann Blair (Harvard University), Elizabeth Eger (King’s  College London), and James Raven (University of Essex). Possible topics include: knowledge networks, (such as the Royal society, libraries, salons, and coffeehouses); secret societies; clubs; literary coteries; epistolary correspondents; religious communities (including sacramental practices); print and publication networks; gift communities (patronage, the ward system); trade networks (such as the East India Company, the Royal Exchange, workers’ guilds, black markets); colonial administration; infrastructure expansion (the post, turnpikes, canals); financial organizations (stock markets, insurance); and others. The deadline for abstracts of 250-500 words in length is January 6, 2012. For further details and submission instructions, see the conference website.

The cause for celebrations.

AMR and the befitting baked goods.

A closer look at the felicitous fancies.

The launch in full swing.

The biography of Martin Lister recently published by our Research Fellow Anna Marie Roos was officially launched this Tuesday at a small but perfectly formed reception in the splendid environs of the Royal Society Library in London. Around thirty guests gathered to mark the appearance of Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639-1712), the First Arachnologist (Brill, 2011) and, during the course of the evening, they were treated to selected readings from Anna Marie, wines from French vineyards visited by Lister (sourced by Anna Marie while researching Lister’s medical journal), and some thematically congruous cupcakes bearing illustrations from Lister’s arachnological and conchological masterworks. Many thanks to Anna Marie for suggesting the idea, to Brill for their generous financial support, and to all at the Royal Society (with special shout-outs to Felicity Henderson and Keith Moore) for allowing us the use of their wondeful venue, for hosting us so graciously, and for all of their assistance with preparations. For more information about the book and to purchase copies, please visit Brill’s website or download the flyer (pdf).

Further to the spatial excitements of our own recent gathering, a one-day conference on Imaginative Geographies: Travels of the Mind in Early Modern Europe will take place at the University of Bristol on Wednesday 28 September 2011. According to the organisers, the event will ‘explore correspondences between geography [and] literary and historical fields of research, to enable varied… cross-disciplinary discourses between scholars and students of the arts and sciences, and to enrich renaissance and early modern research with methodological and thematic diversity’. Panels are devoted to spiritual geographies, cartographic spaces, mapping the other, and mapping the familiar. For the full programme and to sign up please visit the conference website.

Miles Ogborn’s keynote.

Simon Burrows from the FBTIEE project.

Giovanna Ceserani’s keynote.

Discussions continue over lunch.

Testing the demonstrators.

Mark Curran from the FBTIEE project.

The Project’s second international conference, International Geography: Comparative Studies, 1550-1700, took place at St Anne’s College last week on 5–7 September 2011. The event, which was attended by over sixty delegates, allowed twenty-seven emerging and established scholars to present conceptual papers and rich case studies – from Europe and the wider world – which both explored the organization of early modern intellectual activity across time and space, and attempted to implement and refine the concept of ‘intellectual geography’ as a new means of understanding and appreciating the spatial dimensions of intellectual exchange. On the final day, papers from several digital projects – including our good friends from CKCC (Huygens ING) and Mapping the Republic of Letters (Stanford) and new friends from The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (Leeds) – shared some of the opportunities and challenges of capturing and visualizing intellectual geography electronically. Delegates were also treated to a drinks reception in the historic Museum of the History of Science (which incorporated a talk and tour of the intellectual geography of scientific objects), and enjoyed playing with software prototypes of the enormously impressive database of the STN archives prepared by the FBTIEE project, as well as of our own union catalogue of intellectual correspondence. Conference reports, videos, and other outputs will be available soon; in the meantime, for further information, including speaker profiles and abstracts, please visit the conference microsite. Details of our 2012 conference will be available soon.

The Electronic Enlightenment Project is currently seeking paper proposals for its second colloquium on the sociology of the letter, Epistolary Quarrels: Matter and Manner (Oxford, 19 November 2011). The colloquium provides a forum for both academics and graduate students exploring correspondence in the early modern period. The papers given by academics will be forty minutes; those given by graduate students will be twenty minutes. Conference papers can be in English or French. A selection of papers will be published electronically in the Electronic Enlightenment Project’s Letterbook. The deadline for 250-word abstracts is Friday 9 September 2011. For further details and how to submit, visit the colloquium webpage.