Early Modern Scientific and Intellectual Biography (seminar): Difference between revisions
SophieByvik (talk | contribs) mNo edit summary |
MeaghanBrown (talk | contribs) mNo edit summary |
||
(3 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown) | |||
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
For more past programming from the [[Folger Institute]], please see the article [[Folger Institute scholarly programs archive]]. | For more past programming from the [[Folger Institute]], please see the article [[Folger Institute scholarly programs archive]]. | ||
This was a spring 2004 faculty weekend seminar. | This was a spring [[2003–2004 Folger Institute Scholarly Programs|2004]] faculty weekend seminar. | ||
This seminar aimed to introduce historians and literary scholars to some relatively unfamiliar sociological and philosophical resources for re-thinking how biographers—past and present-write about the lives of scientific and philosophical truth-speakers. Part of the exercise was devoted to explicating the codes and conventions used by early modern commentators to talk about their contemporaries: e.g., Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Boyle, Hooke, Locke, Newton. Another part assessed how traditions of telling such lives have changed from the early modern period to our own. Topics | This seminar aimed to introduce historians and literary scholars to some relatively unfamiliar sociological and philosophical resources for re-thinking how biographers—past and present-write about the lives of scientific and philosophical truth-speakers. Part of the exercise was devoted to explicating the codes and conventions used by early modern commentators to talk about their contemporaries: e.g., Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Boyle, Hooke, Locke, Newton. Another part assessed how traditions of telling such lives have changed from the early modern period to our own. Topics addressed included: asceticism and the moral and physical constitution of scientific and philosophical thinkers; the relationship between conceptions of individual authenticity and the idea of truth; the relationship between ideas about knowledge and the mental and moral make-up of knowers; the social role of scholars and its bearing on the moral, social, and intellectual characteristics attributed to them; the uses of intellectual biography in constituting the authority of knowledge; how individuality and the social state figure in such biographies and how motives come to be attributed; and the differences between telling the lives of those who speak truth about reality and those whose cultural products are recognized as works of the imagination. | ||
'''Director''': Steven Shapin is Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His books include ''A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England'' (1994), ''The Scientific Revolution'' (1996), and ''Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life'' (1985, with Simon Schaffer). He is currently working on a book about the ideas of scientific knowledge and personal virtue in late modernity. | '''Director''': [[Steven Shapin]] is Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His books include ''A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England'' (1994), ''The Scientific Revolution'' (1996), and ''Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life'' (1985, with Simon Schaffer). He is currently working on a book about the ideas of scientific knowledge and personal virtue in late modernity. | ||
[[Category: Folger Institute]] | [[Category: Folger Institute]] | ||
Line 11: | Line 11: | ||
[[Category: Program archive]] | [[Category: Program archive]] | ||
[[Category: Seminar]] | [[Category: Seminar]] | ||
[[Category: 16th century]] | |||
[[Category: 17th century]] | |||
[[Category: 18th century]] | |||
[[Category:2003-2004]] |
Latest revision as of 14:05, 13 March 2015
For more past programming from the Folger Institute, please see the article Folger Institute scholarly programs archive.
This was a spring 2004 faculty weekend seminar.
This seminar aimed to introduce historians and literary scholars to some relatively unfamiliar sociological and philosophical resources for re-thinking how biographers—past and present-write about the lives of scientific and philosophical truth-speakers. Part of the exercise was devoted to explicating the codes and conventions used by early modern commentators to talk about their contemporaries: e.g., Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Boyle, Hooke, Locke, Newton. Another part assessed how traditions of telling such lives have changed from the early modern period to our own. Topics addressed included: asceticism and the moral and physical constitution of scientific and philosophical thinkers; the relationship between conceptions of individual authenticity and the idea of truth; the relationship between ideas about knowledge and the mental and moral make-up of knowers; the social role of scholars and its bearing on the moral, social, and intellectual characteristics attributed to them; the uses of intellectual biography in constituting the authority of knowledge; how individuality and the social state figure in such biographies and how motives come to be attributed; and the differences between telling the lives of those who speak truth about reality and those whose cultural products are recognized as works of the imagination.
Director: Steven Shapin is Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His books include A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (1994), The Scientific Revolution (1996), and Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (1985, with Simon Schaffer). He is currently working on a book about the ideas of scientific knowledge and personal virtue in late modernity.