Miert, Dirk van
The case studies in 'Communicating Observations in Early Modern Letters (1500-1675). Epistolography and Epistemology in the Age of the Scientific Revolution' juxtapose instances of knowledge exchange across a variety of fields usually studied in isolation: anthropology, medicine, botany, epigraphy, astronomy, geography, philosophy and chronology. Dirk van Miert is lecturer in History.
In their letters, scientists and scholars tried to come to grips with the often unclear epistemological status of an ‘observation’. It was the specific character of Renaissance epistolography, more than the individual subjects discussed, which shaped the narrative in which information was broadcast in learned networks. Already in the sixteenth century such networks bridged political and religious boundaries and co-operated in the systematic collection, centralisation and critical comparison of observations.
Communicating Observations in Early Modern Letters (1500-1675). Epistolography and Epistemology in the Age of the Scientific Revolution
- Dirk van Miert
- London: Warburg Institute, 2013
- ISBN: 978 19 08 59046 6