FWO Scientific Research Network ‘Circulating Knowledge in Early Modern Science’
with the support of the Catalan Society for the History of Science, CSIC and Ghent University
In recent years extensive scholarship has been produced that falsifies the image that the seventeenth century was a period of ‘decline’ of science in Spain. Without Spain, William Eamon and Victor Navarro-Brotons argue in “Beyond the Black legend” (2007), the Scientific Revolution would be unthinkable. Remarkably, while surely less marginalized in the founding accounts of the Scientific Revolution, the claims which have recently been made for a more important role of the Dutch Republic in the Scientific Revolution in Harold J. Cook’s “Matters of Exchange” highlight related themes to those which also have emerged in the revisionist accounts of Spain and the Scientific Revolution, such as empire, commerce and empiricism. On the other hand, the traditional narrative on ‘science’ in the Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth century, which came under Spanish control, is caught in terms of ‘decline’. If anything, what this shows is the inadequacy of the writing of history of early modern science confined to national histories. In answer to this dissatisfying state of affairs this workshop will therefore focus on the circulation and exchange of knowledge between the Iberian Peninsula and the Low Countries. The papers will concentrate on the processes whereby this circulation (for example, the exchanges of natural specimens gathered through the global networks of the Spanish Empire and Dutch print culture) produces knowledge. In particular two aspects of these Iberian-Netherlandish knowledge exchanges will interest us in the context of this workshop: (1) How should we understand the relation between state and knowledge in the Iberian context? And especially in the Spanish Netherlands? How did the role of the state as a sponsor of often technical knowledge (in the domains of military engineering, architecture, etcetera) effect the nature of knowledge practices in the Spanish Netherlands?; (2) How should we understand the relation between empire and knowledge in the Iberian context? The creation of the Spanish Empire created a space which facilitated the circulation of knowledge from the New World to Europe, but did the circulation of knowledge (think of cosmographical knowledge, but also the arguments of Dutch jurists such as Hugo Grotius in favor of a mare liberum to keep the Atlantic free for competitive commercial shipping) also effect the building of the Spanish Empire? Were they significant differences and similarities between the management of the Spanish and Dutch global networks and knowledge economies? In responding to such questions this workshop hopes, on the one hand, to rewrite the history of the Spanish Netherlands, and on the other, to propose alternative accounts of the change of knowledge practices to that of the Scientific Revolution. This workshop is thus interested in the circulation of images of knowledge as much as in the circulation of knowledge itself between the Low Countries and the Iberian Peninsula.
SPEAKERS include:
Antonio Barrera-Osorio (Colgate University, Hamilton, NY), Jorge Canizares-Esguerra (University of Texas, Austin), Karel Davids (Free University of Amsterdam), Sven Dupré (Ghent University), Susana Gómez (Complutense University of Madrid), Christine Göttler (University of Bern), Henrique Leitao (University of Lisbon), Maria Luz López-Terrada (CSIC, University of Valencia), Pieter Martens (Catholic University of Leuven), Victor Navarro-Brotons (University of Valencia), Juan Navarro-Loidi (Instituto de Bachillerato a Distancia "Bilintx" de Guipúcoa), José Pardo Tomas (CSIC, Barcelona), Mar Rey Bueno (Revista Azogue, Madrid), Geert Vanpaemel (Catholic University of Leuven)
Congress committee: Sven Dupré (Ghent University, conference chair), Fernand Hallyn (Ghent University), Henrique Leitao (University of Lisbon), Victor Navarro-Brotons (University of Valencia), José Pardo (local arrangements chair, CSIC, Barcelona), Steven Vanden Broecke (Ghent University), Geert Vanpaemel (University of Leuven)
Venue: