Centers of Accumulation: Collecting points and the circulation of knowledge

FWO Research Network Programme: Circulating Knowledge in Early Modern Science

Fourth Gent Workshop – 28-29 November 2008

Before a location on any given path of circulation can fashion itself as an authoritative center of (knowledge) production and diffusion (Latour invokes the term ‘center of calculation’ to describe such locations), it must first become a center of accumulation: a location where objects and resources are collected in a concentrated way and subjected to a process of organization (Latour 1987, pp. 215-57). Depending on the intensity or extensiveness of this accumulation and whether transformative tools of description and/or analysis that have also been collected in the same location are engaged as a core principle of this process, a center of accumulation can begin fashioning itself as something more – as a key node in the production and dissemination of knowledge or manufactured goods. 

By focusing on these prior moments of local history and the networks that make them possible, we are in a position to compare the productive activities that take place in and through laboratories and observatories with those associated with other historically significant collecting points, be they botanical gardens, libraries, physical cabinets, workshops or printing shops.

This workshop intends to focus on centers of accumulation during the early modern period for two reasons. The first is to map the history of collecting as a pregnant moment in the production of knowledge and manufacture, one that links networks of exchange and accumulation with processes of local signification (i.e. processes of ascribing significance through the placement of that which is collected in some ordering or productive context) and subsequent use. The second reason follows from this: to consider an interpretive structure that points to similarities as well as differences among various loci and kinds of accumulation.

Programme

I.  Welcome and introduction: Setting the problem in historical and historiographical context

• 9:15-10:00

  Lissa Roberts (Universiteit Twente)

  “Examining the circulation of knowledge through the lens of accumulation and fetishism”

  
  

II. The routes and results of accumulation

• 10:00-11:00

  Benjamin Schmidt (University of Washington)

  “Accumulating the World:  Collecting 'Globalism' in Early Modern Europe”

  Commentator: Alette Fleischer

• 11:00-11:15
  

  coffee

• 11:15-12:15

  Alette Fleischer (Universiteit Twente)

  “The Company’s garden at the Cape of Good Hope: (Ex)Changing nature and knowledges, 1650-1700”

  Commentator: Kapil Raj

• 12:15-13:15

  Kapil Raj (Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris)

  “Does the accumulation/calculation distinction hold when seen from outside Europe: a critical examination of the making and dissemination of two early-modern herbals”

  Commentator: Benjamin Schmidt

• 13:15-14:45

  Lunch

  
  

III. Accumulation in the Low Countries 

• 14:45-15:45

  Steven van den Broecke (University of Ghent)

  “Centers of accumulation and Renaissance astronomy in the Low Countries”

  Commentator: Gerhard Wiesendfeldt

• 15:45-16:45

  Rina Knoeff (Universiteit Leiden)

  “The Visitor’s View. Early Modern Tourism and the Polyvalence of Anatomical Exhibits”

  Commentator: Steven vanden Broecke

• 16:45-17:00

  Tea

• 17:00-18:00
  

  Network Participant meeting

• 19:00

  Dinner
  

  
  

Saturday, 29 November

• 9:45-10:45

  Ernst Hamm (York University)

  “Experimental Philosophy: Collecting Point for Mennonites”

  Commentator: Rina Knoeff

• 10:45-11:00

  Coffee

• 11:00-12:00

  Gerhard Wiesendfeldt (University of Melbourne)

  “Creating Centres of Accumulation in the Province: Haarlem and Weimar/Jena 1770-1830”

  Commentator: Ernst Hamm

• 12:00-13:00

  Final discussion

  Commentator and moderator: Lissa Roberts

• 13:00-14:30

  Lunch