Organisers: 

Harold Cook (UCL) and Sven Dupré (Ghent University)

The first workshop of this series focused on the material vehicles of the circulation of knowledge and raised questions about the limitations of objects to function as carriers of knowledge (see Sven Dupré and Christoph Lüthy, Silent Messengers, forthcoming). 

In this workshop we look at the linguistic expressions of information and knowledge, and investigate how they facilitate or inhibit the circulation of knowledge. Not all languages are equally adapted to communicate ‘scientific’ knowledge, as the Dutch mathematician and engineer Simon Stevin already knew – he preferred his own vernacular above all other languages. It is no coincidence that Stevin is therefore the inventor of several Dutch neologisms in mathematics (such as kegel for cone). But the linguistic problems faced by the new science were greater than that of the translation from classical Greek and Latin, for two other contexts involving confrontation with local knowledge revealed problems about how best to express information and knowledge for which no equivalent in learned circles and the languages they used was available: (1) the confrontation with local medical and botanical knowledge outside Europe and (2) the confrontation with experiential knowledge inside workshops of artisans. 

The papers in this workshop thus focus on translation and naming as an important process that allowed the circulation of knowledge.  However, every translation also involves a loss of local meaning which inevitably leads to misunderstandings. To what extent and in which way can such misunderstandings be creative or productive of knowledge? Who were the translators? Did the translators function as go-betweens between different cultures? Which rules governed translations? Did these rules differ from context to context? Can the rise of the vernacular be attributed to the availability of linguistic expressions of local knowledge not available in Latin? Is the rise of the visual to be associated with the limits of linguistic expression of local knowledge?

Invited speakers include: 

Jim Bennett (University of Oxford); Peter Burke (University of Cambridge); Candice Delisle (UCL); Florike Egmond (University of Leiden); Roger Hart (University of Texas, Austin); Sachiko Kusukawa (University of Cambridge); Matthias Schemmel (Max Planck Institute for History of Science, Berlin); Benjamin Schmidt (University of Washington, Seattle); Philippe Selosse (Université Lumière - Lyon2); Toon van Hal (Catholic University of Leuven).

Registration: 

Registration is required. A registration form will be available from the Centre's website or from Sally Bragg at the end of July 2009. Any queries concerning the programme should be directed to Sven Dupré.

Venue: 

Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL

The Wellcome Building

183 Euston Road

London NW1 2BE

United Kingdom