Empires of Knowledge: Scientific Networks in the Early Modern World

by Paula Findlen (Editor)

Empires of Knowledge charts the emergence of different kinds of scientific networks – local and long-distance, informal and institutional, religious and secular – as one of the important phenomena of the early modern world. It seeks to answer questions about what role these networks played in making knowledge, how information traveled, how it was transformed by travel, and who the brokers of this world were.

Bringing together an international group of historians of science and medicine, this book looks at the changing relationship between knowledge and community in the early modern period through case studies connecting Europe, Asia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Americas. It explores a landscape of understanding (and misunderstanding) nature through examinations of well-known intelligencers such as overseas missions, trading companies, and empires while incorporating more recent scholarship on the many less prominent go-betweens, such as translators and local experts, which made these networks of knowledge vibrant and truly global institutions.

Empires of Knowledge is the perfect introduction to the global history of early modern science and medicine.

Genres: Science, History Of Science, History

397 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 26, 2018

About the author

Paula Findlen (1964- ) is an American academic and historian, whose work focuses on the history of science and medicine, and the history of the Renaissance. She was educated at Wellesley College (BA), and the University of California, Berkeley (MA & PhD). Findlen is Professor of Early Modern Europe and History of Science, Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History, and Co-Director of the Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at Stanford University. Her book, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy was given the Pfizer Award in 1996 by the History of Science Society.