This article identifies the first known instance of visual engagement with the iconic anatomical imagery of Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (1543) east of Istanbul. Two skeleton men from the Fabrica provide the design for skeletal sculptures decorating the Dutch cemetery in the colonial port town of Pulicat, in Tamil Nadu, India. We ask what it meant to engage with these iconic images of European anatomy in a seventeenth-century trading port on the Bay of Bengal, both for those who were responsible for their production and for those who passed by the cemetery. This article argues that the visual solutions of the Pulicat sculptures bring into conversation not only medical anatomy and funerary architecture, but also the artistic traditions of Europe and the Deccan, and, most importantly, the somewhat differing early modern European and Indian approaches to visualizing the skeletal structures of human bodies. The Pulicat sculptures can be productively understood as a potential meeting point for the contemplation of the fragile human body from the perspectives of European and Islamicate anatomy, Christian traditions of natural theology and memento mori, as well as South Indian and especially mystic Sufi asceticism.

This article examines how wartime conditions affect the practice of reading. Its focus is on how Machiavelli's The Prince was read by a high school student, G & aacute;bor Feh & eacute;r, in Hungary in World War II. By examining how Feh & eacute;r studied Machiavelli to understand Hitler, and how Feh & eacute;r reflected on contemporary thinkers' writings about modernity, this article offers a contribution toward understanding how people from all walks of life reflected on the meaning and methods of history. It also provides a genealogy of Quentin Skinner's contextual interpretations of political thought, examining how earlier proponents of contextualism reconciled their historical sensibilities to the idea of comparing Machiavelli to Hitler.

This article offers a revisionist interpretation of the early modern Republic of Letters by offering a contextual analysis of explicit mentions of the term by scholars across Europe in the perio d. The current historiography on the Republic of Letters tends to present it as the place of friendly, solidary and democratic cooperation across national and religious boundaries. This article argues, instea d, that members of the Republic of Letters conceptualised it as a battlefield of permanent warfar e. Early modern scholars often compared themselves to soldiers of a hierarchically organised army or to fighters in a civil wa r. It is claimed that a militarised conceptualisation of the Republic of Letters offers the opportunity to re-engage with Reinhart Koselleck's influential Kritik und Krise . Evidence is presented from fifteenth-century Italy to early nineteenth-century Hungary.

This article uses the mythological figure of the satyr to examine European attitudes towards incorporating mythical creatures into zoology and, more broadly, to survey attempts to reconcile the relative status of myth vis-à-vis modern science. Evidence is used from the past five hundred years to argue for the longevity of these debates, which continue to repeat the same arguments based on the same sources. It is argued that scholars' attitudes towards Ancient civilizations play a significant role in explaining whether they decide to consider the satyr as the product of the imperfect observation of monkeys or as a creature on its own right.

It is the aim of this article to put questions of maintenance and repair in the history of science and technology under scrutiny, with a special focus on technologies and methods of transportation. The history of transportation is a history of trying to avoid shipwrecks and plane crashes. It is also a history of broken masts, worm-eaten hulls, the flat tires of cars, and endless delays at airports. This introductory article assesses the technological, scientific, and cultural implications of repairing and maintaining transportation networks. We argue that infrastructures for maintenance and repair played just as important a role in the history of transportation as the wharves and factories where ships, cars, trains, and airplanes were originally built. We also suggest that maintenance and repair are important sites of knowledge production, and a historical account of these practices provides a new, decentered narrative for the development of modern science and technology.

important questions about how the practical problems of rendering scientific texts from one language to another generate new knowledge, and how choices of translation shape what science and medicine mean to different communities.1If the earlier scholarship on translation theory engaged primarily with works of literature, this growing interest in scientific and medical works challenges old assumptions that science either speaks the universal language of mathematics or the divine language of nature.Harold Cook, the editor of Translation at Work, is no newcomer to the topic, having co-edited an important volume with Sven Dupré on Translating Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries, and also written on the topic extensively in his pioneering and highly influential Matters of Exchange.2This excellent, highly learned and groundbreaking volume turns attention to the role of China in medical exchanges in the early modern world.A stellar set of contributions examines translation both as a textual practice and as a metaphor for knowledge exchanges between different medical systems.The volume's aim is less to contribute to long-standing debates in translation theory, and more to focus on actual practices on the ground.The various contributions put under scrutiny the pluralism of strategies and approaches that 1

This article situates the collecting practices of museums of natural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in dialogue with similar practices amongst societies in the Pacific by focusing on how European curators, dealers in natural history and Pacific Islanders shared a common fascination with Spondylus shells. In particular, this article examines the processes for turning Spondylus shells into unique or duplicate specimens. Spondylus shells were crucial for regulating gift and commercial exchanges in the societies of both regions. Famously, the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski claimed that these shells were an essential element of the gift-based kula exchange, which helped him distinguish Western capitalist society from less developed societies without commercial trade. Yet Spondylus shells were also collected and exchanged as gifts amongst British and European naturalists in this period, performing the same roles as in Melanesia. In addition, such gift exchanges could only come into being thanks to the actions of commercially motivated dealers, located both in the Pacific and in Europe, who were the suppliers of these shells both to Melanesian participants in the kula and to Western natural historians and collectors. These observations call into question earlier arguments that equate modernity with the rise of commercial capitalism. It is instead claimed that commercial and gift exchanges were intricately connected and reliant on each other throughout the period, whether in the worlds of Western museums or in Pacific archipelagos. The act of turning Spondylus shells into unique or duplicate specimens was the key tool for regulating these exchanges.

This chapter examines the deterioration of the woodblocks in several editions of Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica, the first fully illustrated anatomy atlas. Comparison of different woodcuts in the Fabrica reveals a consistent pattern of degradation across copies: perfect impressions of the woodblocks were selected to be bound to form a first-state book; impressions of the damaged woodblocks were bound together to form a later-state volume. This finding suggests the early modern print shop was not as disorganised as Adrian Johns and other historians have claimed in recent years.

This edited collection of papers explores from an interdisciplinary perspective the role of images and objects in early modern knowledge-making practices with an emphasis on mapping methodological approaches against printed pictures and things. The volume brings together work across diverse printed images, objects, and materials produced c. 1500-1700, as well as well as works in the ambit of early modern print culture, to reframe a comparative history of the rise of the ‘epistemic imprint’ as a new visual genre at the onset of the scientific revolution. The book includes contributions from the perspective of international scholars and museum professionals drawing on methodologies from a range of fields.

Previous articleNext article No AccessMedia ReviewStarry Messengers Werner Herzog; Clive Oppenheimer (Directors). Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds. 97 min. Toronto: Sandbox Films, 2020.Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh and Dániel MargócsyGianamar Giovannetti-Singh Search for more articles by this author and Dániel Margócsy Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 113, Number 1March 2022 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/718298 Views: 94Total views on this site © 2022 History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

This article offers a new interpretation of the concept of wonder in early modern Europe by focusing on large collections. It shows that many princely Kunstkammern were located above stables, and argues that the horses downstairs and the curiosities upstairs performed similar roles in the courtly display of power. The size and design of stables shaped how curiosities were exhibited and viewed. These majestic buildings facilitated cursory viewing experiences of the assemblage of a great number of animals and objects. They did not necessarily encourage the detailed examination of particular and unique exhibits.

The 2020 annual meeting of the History of Science Society was planned as a joint event with the Society for History of Technology (SHOT), to be held from 8 to 11 October in New Orleans, a city known for its unmatched joie de vivre and a substantial cultural and economic presence that belies its precarious environmental and social realities. The high number of 675 abstract submissions and over 90 accepted sessions for HSS alone attested to the attraction that the joint endeavor in NOLA had for our community. With 32 joint sessions (25 organized sessions and 7 roundtables), the exciting program developed inMarch and April 2020manifested a shared enthusiasm frommembers of both societies to explore productive overlaps. The rapid spread of the COVID pandemic then forced us to venture into new ground. By June 2020 it was clear that an in-person meeting in NewOrleans was impossible. For us, the program co-chairs, this meant that we were to prepare two programs in one year. Working remotely on a program for a joint annual meeting with SHOT was only the first big and time-consuming challenge. Switching gears for going virtual required reenvisioning a new proposal, program, and implementation. The resulting HSS and SHOT 2020 Virtual Forum, which ran from 8 to 10 October, was not meant to replace the in-person meeting we had planned with SHOT in New Orleans. Our Society’s first virtual event aimed to reflect the agenda of a joint endeavor with SHOT; but, at the same time, it was a truly different, and much smaller, gathering developed in summer 2020 amidst unsettling political tensions, racial reckoning, and an accumulating health crisis. In response to these circumstances, the Virtual Forum was designed to speak to the current moment, discuss themes of broad interest, and address urgent matters that affect our members and society at large. The regular in-person joint annual meeting with SHOT was postponed—it is now to take place in New Orleans in late November 2021—and everyone accepted to the 2020 meeting has received instructions about their options to present in the coming year. Planning the Virtual Forum was done by way of a new ad hoc committee. Headed by us, as program co-chairs, and Karen-Beth Scholthof, chair of the Committee on Meetings and Programs, the Virtual Forum Committee brought together representatives of the Executive Committee, the Council, the Committee on Education and Engagement, the Committee on Technology and Communication, and the Graduate and Early Career Caucus. Our special thanks go to Luis Campos, Jean-François Gauvin, Gwen Kay, Sarah Naramore, Sarah Pickman, Kathleen Shephard, Karen Rader, and Sara Qidwai for their invaluable advice and energetic support. The Virtual Forum Committee’s composition was crucial to making the meeting a success. We experimented with a lot of things: a new schedule with shorter sessions and longer breaks between each of them; a virtual platform; a new selection strategy that asked organizers of some of the sessions initially chosen for the 2020 program to refine their proposals for a virtual format; a focus on roundtables that addressed themes of broad interest; a new format to honor the Sarton Medal winner by way of an hour-long conversation; the “Authors’ Pitch” for book presentations produced by authors themselves; and, finally, new sessions organized by HSS constituencies that brought together many different voices throughout HSS and put the future of the Society at center stage. To capture some of the spirit of in-person meetings, we included Happy Hours in the

Previous articleNext article No AccessGeneralPatrick Manning; Daniel Rood (Editors). Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750–1850. vii + 401 pp., figs., bibl., index. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. $49.95 (cloth); ISBN 9780822944546. E-book available. Patrick Manning; Mat Savelli (Editors). Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945–1980. xi + 314 pp., notes, bibl., index. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. $45 (cloth); ISBN 9780822945277. E-book available. Patrick Manning; Abigail Owen (Editors). Knowledge in Translation: Global Patterns of Scientific Exchange, 1000–1800 CE. xv + 437 pp., notes, bibl., index. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. $55 (cloth); ISBN 9780822945376. E-book available.Dániel MargócsyDániel Margócsy Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 111, Number 4December 2020 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/712040 Views: 105Total views on this site © 2020 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Next time you are in a library, open a random 16th-century book. There is a good chance that it contains a number of early handwritten annotations, underlinings, and haphazard jottings. Most books printed before 1600 were marked up by their readers in such a manner. A careful study of these annotations can reveal how readers responded to books, and what impact printed books had on the early modern world. We can examine how studiously the composer Johann Sebastian Bach read his Bible, and how much the protestant reformer Martin Luther disliked his contemporary author Erasmus of Rotterdam, writing “You are crazy” on the margins of Erasmus' edition of the New Testament.