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

Post updated to include photographs

Our Martin Lister Research Fellow Anna Marie Roos has curated a small exhibition entitled ‘The Lister Sisters and the Art of Seventeenth-Century Science’, which will run in the Proscholium of the Old Bodleian Library from 18 August to 30 September (the poster can be downloaded here [pdf]). The free display showcases a unique set of drawings, prints, and copperplates of molluscs and their shells, (re)discovered among the library’s holdings by Anna Marie in 2010, which formed the basis for the illustrations in Martin Lister’s conchological magnum opus, the Historiae Conchyliorum (1685-92). Prepared by Lister’s teenage daughters, Susanna and Anna, the materials shed light on representational conventions within late seventeenth-century natural history, as well as on the gendered nature of illustrative practice in this boom era for lavishly illuminated scientific books. Anna Marie will also be giving a free lecture on ‘The Art of Science: The Rediscovery of the Lister Copperplates’ at 1pm on Wednesday 19 September in the Bodleian’s Convocation House (more info and booking on the library website). Further details of both events on The Conveyor.

Anna Marie in front of the display

Lecturing in Convocation House

In conversation with Stephen Johnston

The exhibition proves a hit

Podcasts on the conference page!

In commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the death of Martin Lister, and in another collaboration between Cultures of Knowledge and The Royal Society, our indefatigable Lister Research Fellow Anna Marie Roos organized a conference on History Comes to Life: Seventeenth-Century Natural History, Medicine, and the New Science at the Society’s London premises on 27 April 2012.

Generously sponsored by the project, The Royal Society, The Wellcome Trust, the John Fell Fund, and the BSHS, sixty-three delegates attended the day-long event, which featured papers from eleven international authorities on early modern science. Speakers discussed everything from the views of French naturalists about the differences between dromedaries and camels, to the chequered history of the publication of the cabinet of natural curiosities of Albertus Seba, to the ornithology of Francis Willughby and John Ray and the scientific representation of frogs and toads.

Helen Watt, our Lhwyd researcher.

Perusing the exhibition.

Anna Marie talks to Jill Lewis.

Early modern ornithologies.

There was a concomitant exhibition in the Royal Society’s Marble Hall, also curated by Anna Marie, featuring a display of relevant books from the Society’s collections; highlights were a bear paw clam displayed alongside its illustration by Lister’s daughters in his Historiae Conchyliorum (1692-97), and John Ray’s Historia Plantarum, in which Ray deployed the terms ‘petal’ and ‘pollen’ for the first time. In a further exciting output, Anna Marie will guest edit a special conference issue of Notes and Records of the Royal Society (December 2012) dedicated to the complex interplay between seventeenth-century medicine and natural history. Dovetailing out from Lister’s own contributions, the special issue will consider to what extent practices and technologies of natural history changed between the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, and will explore how the acquisition of knowledge concerning the natural world and new taxonomies affected the perception and treatment of beasts for medical and experimental use.

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 intellectual contributions of John Aubrey, one of the best-connected scholars of the seventeenth century, a prolific correspondent, and a main focus of Cultures of Knowledge, will be brought to the fore in 2010. An exhibition entitled ‘‘My wit was always working’: John Aubrey and the Development of Experimental Science’, will run from 28 May–31 October 2010 in the Exhibition Room of the Bodleian Library. The exhibition is curated by Project participant Dr William Poole, who has also written a companion volume, John Aubrey and the Advancement of Learning. To be released by Bodleian Publishing on 1 May 2010, the Project is delighted to have been able to support the book, for which advance information is available here (doc) . The exhibition will also be accompanied by an ‘Aubrey Day’ on Saturday 19 June, and a series of lunchtime talks on Fridays throughout July and August; for full details, see here.

A new exhibition on ‘Art of the Bohemian Reformation, 1380-1620′, curated by our Comenius Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Kateřina Horníčková, will open tomorrow (16 December 2009) at the Imperial Stable of Prague Castle. During the Reformation each of the Christian denominations in the Czech lands used art for representational purposes but, although many of these works survive, those created for non-Catholics have remained little known. The only Protestant church to enjoy legal recognition was the Utraquist; the Unity of Brethren (whose last bishop was Jan Amos Comenius), Lutherans, and Calvinists, did not gain full legal status until 1609. The exhibition, which showcases over 120 works, marks the 400th anniversary of this occasion. It encompasses late-fourteenth-century Hussitism and criticism of the use of images in religious practice, through a blossoming of art under Utraquism and Lutheranism, to the 1619 iconoclasm in St Vitus’s Cathedral, and the final years of the Refomation, which ended with the defeat of Protestant forces at the Battle of White Moutain. Klaudián’s map of Bohemia, the Codex of Jena, the Litoměřice Gradual with its depictions of Jan Hus, a carved altar by the Master IP from the church of the Our Lady upon Tyne, treasures from Kutná Hora, and works by the Rudolphinian artist Bartolomeus Spranger are among the sculptures, altar-pieces, ecclesiastical ornaments, and illuminated manuscripts through which it is possible to trace the radical shift from religious icon as object of veneration to that of image used for didactic, decorative, memorial, and representational purposes. The exhibition runs until 4 April 2010; for full details, see the website.