History of knowledge

Zuo Ya’s new book, Shen Gua’s Empiricism, explores the life and idea of Shen Gua, and the history of knowledge in the Northern Song dynasty with a historical epistemological approach, and argues the empirical stance of Shen Gua reveal the emergence of a new kind of epistemology. This article analyzes the ways in which Zuo Ya weaves a network of concepts around empiricism, and builds a historical and intellectual ground to use these concepts.

A review of Quinn Slobodian's "Globalists" and Janek Wasserman's "Marginal Revolutions", my essay uses the two books as a springboard for a reading of neoliberalism as a fruit of the late Habsburg culture of knowledge. Using Slobodian's book to bring out the authoritarian slant of the neoliberal project, the article also traces the remarkable entente of neoliberalism with the current far right: The essay unravels how right-wing populists decry migration, the movement of people, while giving leverage to the movement of free capital.

Forthcoming in August 2020.

This book is a unique attempt to capture the growing societal experience of living in an age unlike anything the world has ever seen. Fueled by the perception of acquiring unprecedented powers through technologies that entangle the human and the natural worlds, human beings have become agents of a new kind of transformative event. The ongoing sixth mass extinction of species, the prospect of a technological singularity, and the potential crossing of planetary boundaries are expected to trigger transformations on a planetary scale that we deem catastrophic and try to avoid. In making sense of these prospects, Simon's book sketches the rise of a new epochal thinking, introduces the epochal event as an emerging category of a renewed historical thought, and makes the case for the necessity of bringing together the work of the human and the natural sciences in developing knowledge of a more-than-human world.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030478049

Reviews
"Zoltán Simon continues his quest to develop an understanding of our predicament of anthropogenic-technological transformations that is both untimely and timely, in the best Nietzschean sense-both radically different from existing theories and exactly what we need in the present moment. In The Epochal Event, he offers us a tool to engage meaningfully and critically with the effects of human planetary-scale agency, and points out a new direction for historical thinking to contribute to the omni-disciplinary endeavor to save the planet and our futures." - Helge Jordheim, Professor in Cultural History and Museology, University of Oslo, Norway

"This book offers much needed conceptual orientation about our current situation, the complexity of which we haven't understood yet. It makes us see how contemporary historiography can approach the affordances of our time in their intricate entanglement. If one wants to get a sense for the epochal significance of the Anthropocene-thesis in its ontological and political bearings, here is a well-argued statement." - Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Professor MSO in Philosophy, Aarhus University, Denmark

Paper available via http://www.ejournals.eu/sj/index.php/SHS/article/view/SHS.19.007.11013/6825
extended abstract on SHS blog: http://blog-studia-historiae-scientiarum.pau.krakow.pl/local-knowledge-and-amateur-participation-shevchenko-scientific-society-1892-1914/

Regarding the moon, I would like to focus on one specific aspect of taxonomy of planets: the elaboration of appearance of celestial bodies, as object of knowledge based on production of scientific pictures. Alongside the celestial mechanics, the development of astronomical observation indeed allows emergence of new visual representations. These are based on the new experience of observing the planets of the solar system, endowed with a singular form, appearance and commensurability. In this development the Moon, as the closest celestial body and the most accessible by sight, plays as a prototype for the visualization of the other planets. Its exploitation begins with Galileo and ends as we shall see between 1900 and 1914 when emerged a moon landscape.

In the Habsburg lands “positive knowledge” served as the key framework of liberal science from the 1830s because it permitted its practitioners to trace inexorable social-political progress. In the 1850s Mill’s version of positivism was translated to the Austrian lands by the classicist Theodor Gomperz. This chapter traces the rival varieties of positivism across scientific domains (the natural sciences, philology, philosophy, history, law). It demonstrates how Mill’s model of inquiry was refashioned by Ernst Mach and Franz Brentano, by the Vienna Circle (Schlick, Carnap, Neurath), as well as by Hans Kelsen’s critical-democratic legal positivism. The final section analyzes the fin de siècle shipwreck of positivism and links it to the collapse of Austrian liberalism whose vision of benign imperial rule, society and scientific inquiry it had provided.

The research group “Radical Utopian Communities: Global Histories from the Margins, 1900-1950” invites applications for one (1) doctoral position (TV-L E13, 65%) to join the team on 1 October 2020 or at an early date thereafter. The research project is funded by the VolkswagenStiftung as part of the Freigeist-Fellowship program. The group is integrated in the School of History at LMU Munich and closely affiliated with the Munich Centre for Global History. A master’s degree (M.A.) or equivalent in History or related discipline in the humanities and social sciences such as Anthropology, Area Studies, Culture Studies, (Comparative) Literature, Political Science, Religious Studies etc with a significant historical focus is required by the time of appointment. Preference will be given to applicants with a training in global and/or extra-European history, including language proficiency in non-European languages (and relevant to the doctoral thesis). International academic experience (study, research, conferences etc.) is an advantage. Moreover, applicants should demonstrate ability in archival and/or fieldwork, commitment to teamwork, and reliability to meet deadlines.
“Radical Utopian Communities” analyzes communal projects in the first half of the twentieth century. The project aims at writing a decentered global history that unearths marginalized histories with new archival evidence and innovative historical narration. It investigates communes in various places of the world. The communities are showcases for the high degree of mobility and entanglement in the early twentieth century. Yet the project critically engages with the image of borderless mobility and ideals of communal harmony. And it focusses people and communities who too often fall through the cracks of mainstream historiography and who provide unexpected angles to look at the modern world and its make-up from the margins.
The doctoral position is offered for the duration of three years. Budget for archival/fieldwork travels, conferences etc. is available. Doctoral candidates will be integrated into a young, dynamic, and internationally well-connected research environment. Over the course of the three years, candidates are recommended to gain teaching experience at LMU.
Applications must include: 1) cover letter, 2) CV, 3) doctoral thesis proposal related to the research project “Radical Utopian Communities” (no longer than 3,000 words, including references), 4) writing sample (preferably in English), 5) copies of diplomas/certificates, and 6) names and contact information of at least two academic referees. Please submit all documents in a single PDF to robert.kramm[at]lrz.uni-muenchen.de by 30 June 2020.
We especially seek applications from qualified individuals with disabilities and welcome applications from women.

For further information and questions regarding the positions and the research project please contact the principal investigator Dr. Robert Kramm (robert.kramm[at]lrz.uni-muenchen.de).
Interviews are scheduled for late July/early August. Considering the current situation, interviews will probably be conducted via Skype or similar applications/channels.

In: Duve, Thomas / Otto Danwerth (eds.): Knowledge of the Pragmatici: Legal and Moral Theological Literature and the Formation of Early Modern Ibero-America (Max Planck Studies in Global Legal History of the Iberian Worlds, 1) Leiden / Boston 2020, 89-130.
Open Access: https://brill.com/view/title/56781

Abstract:

The circulation of pragmatic normative texts – particularly religious ones – contributed to the establishment of knowledge regimes in early modern Spanish America. Handbooks of moral theology, catechisms, manuals for confession, and other genres applied especially in missionary contexts were central media for the diffusion of normative orders in an emerging empire. The analysis of a multidisciplinary historiography on the production, possession and circulation of books speaks to their dispersion in different regions of the New World during the 16th and 17th centuries. Expanding on that knowledge, and drawing on archival sources, this chapter assesses comparatively the role played by the transatlantic trade, the controls on importation of books from Seville, and the relatively minor contribution of American printing presses. Finally, the chapter highlights case studies drawn from library catalogues and personal book inventories in colonial Mexico and Peru to illustrate that pragmatic books (and manuscripts) for practitioners were not only present in urban settings but reached rural users and mission zones as well, providing resources of normativity.

Digital Access: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425736

Knowledge of the pragmatici sheds new light on pragmatic normative literature (mainly from the religious sphere), a genre crucial for the formation of normative orders in early modern Ibero-America. Long underrated by legal historical scholarship, these media – manuals for confessors, catechisms, and moral theological literature – selected and localised normative knowledge for the colonial worlds and thus shaped the language of normativity.

The eleven chapters of this book explore the circulation and the uses of pragmatic normative texts in the Iberian peninsula, in New Spain, Peru, New Granada and Brazil. The book reveals the functions and intellectual achievements of pragmatic literature, which condensed normative knowledge, drawing on medieval scholarly practices of ‘epitomisation’, and links the genre with early modern legal culture.

Contributors are: Manuela Bragagnolo, Agustín Casagrande, Otto Danwerth, Thomas Duve, José Luis Egío, Renzo Honores, Gustavo César Machado Cabral, Pilar Mejía, Christoph H. F. Meyer, Osvaldo Moutin, and David Rex Galindo.

In den 1990er und 2000er Jahren diskutierten britische Politiker, Akademiker und Journalisten öffentlich über die Definition britischer nationaler Identität, kurz Britishness. Aus der Perspektive der neuen Ideengeschichte versteht diese Studie die Debatte als Teil eines seit den späten 1960er Jahren andauernden Aushandlungsprozesses. Fragen nationaler und gesellschaftlicher Zugehörigkeit wurden zur Chiffre im Umgang mit wirtschaftlichen, politischen und demographischen Veränderungen wie dem Ende des Empire, den Forderungen nach schottischer und walisischer Selbstbestimmung sowie der Sorge um die Konsequenzen postkolonialer Einwanderung, die die bis dahin bestehende Sozialordnung in Frage stellten. Almuth Ebke ordnet dabei nicht nur die einzelnen Debattenstränge in den historischen Kontext ein, sondern untersucht auch den damit zusammenhängenden Wandel der Begriffe, die zur Beschreibung sozialer Zugehörigkeit verwendet wurden. Aus dieser Perspektive gelingt es nicht nur, bis heute verwendete Analysekategorien wie „nationale Identität“ historisch zu verorten. Aktuelle Debatten wie um den Brexit werden darüber hinaus als gegenwärtige Ausprägungen einer schon viel länger ablaufenden Selbstverständigungsdebatte in Großbritannien sichtbar.

In the context of the covid-19 pandemic, Germany witnesses debates on whether masks could help contain the spread of the virus. This article argues the controversy may be rooted in the deep-seated suspicion of facial covering in Europe since the nineteenth century.

Divine warnings, astrological signs and astronomical phenomena – comets have always fascinated people. What was accepted as true and right and thus knowledge about comets, however, changed over time, and particularly in the early modern period. The monograph examines this process in the Holy Roman Empire using the examples of three spectacular cometary appearances – those of 1577/78, 1680/81 and 1743/44. The leading questions are how and why knowledge about comets changed and what role simultaneous changes in the media setting played here.
The integral approach of the study challenges assumptions common in science and media history, which understand knowledge and media changes as teleological developments mainly fostered by a few leadings actors ("Meistererzählungen"). The analysis systematically includes almost all of the contemporary print production on the subject, highlighting knowledge, people and media forms usually neglected by research. Thus the process of knowledge change proves to be multi-layered, culminating in dead ends and, from today's perspective, sometimes paradoxical. It is therefore only partially compatible with the prevailing narrative of linear scientific progress.

Göttliche Warnung, astrologisches Zeichen und astronomisches Phänomen – Ko­me­ten faszinieren die Menschen seit jeher. Was über Kometen als wahr und richtig und somit als Wissen galt, änderte sich jedoch im Laufe der Zeit und besonders stark in der Frühen Neuzeit. Die Monographie untersucht diesen Prozess im Hei­li­gen Römischen Reich am Beispiel von drei Aufsehen erregenden Ko­me­ten­er­schei­nungen – jenen von 1577/78, 1680/81 und 1743/44. Es wird gefragt, wie und warum sich Kometenwissen wandelte und welche Rolle hierbei gleich­zei­tig statt­findende Veränderungen im Mediengeflecht spielten.
Der integrale Ansatz der Studie bricht mit den vom Fortschrittsgedanken geprägten Meistererzählungen der Wissen(schaft)s- und Mediengeschichte, die Wissens- und Medienwandel als zielgerichtete Entwicklungen begreifen. Nahezu die ge­sam­te zeitgenössische Druckproduktion zum Thema wird systematisch erschlossen, wodurch bislang kaum beachtete Wissensbestände, Personen und Medienformen in den Blick gerückt werden. So erweist sich der Prozess des Wissenswandels als vielschichtig, in Sackgassen mündend und, aus heutiger Perspektive, mitunter als paradox. Er ist mit der vorherrschenden Erzählung von einem geradlinigen wis­sen­schaftlichen Fortschritt also nur bedingt vereinbar.

This essay was submitted as part of the coursework in Directed Reading for the MLitt in Early Modern History at the University of St Andrews.

It received a mark of Clear Distinction (18.5 on the 20-point St Andrews scale).

I have made some minor edits, based on the suggestions that one of the markers put forth. Thus, removing any grammatical errors and other misdemeanours.

Focusing on the publications on comets by Eberhard Christian Kindermann, the paper examines the communicative role of periodical journals in the Holy Roman Empire by the mid-eighteenth century. Most of the contemporary articles were reviews that acted as 'filters' and 'multipliers' of theories and knowledge that had mostly been communicated in pamphlets and books beforehand. The most critical reviews referred to Kindermann's publications. The reason for this was mainly their high degree of fantastic elements that did not correspond with the epistemic rules that were accepted by most of the scholars of the time.