Workshop "Ignorance, Nescience, Nonknowledge: Late Medieval and Early Modern Coping with Unknowns", Feb 19-20, Harvard University (original) (raw)

Renate Dürr (ed.), Threatened Knowledge: Practices of Knowing and Ignoring from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century

Routledge, 2021

Threatened Knowledge discusses the practices of knowing, not-knowing, and not wanting to know from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. In times of "fake news", processes of forgetting and practices of nonknowledge have sparked the interest of historical and sociological research. The common ground between all the contributions in this volume is the assumption that knowledge does not simply increase over time and thus supplant phases of not-knowing. Moreover, the contributions show that knowing and not-knowing function in very similar ways, which means they can be analysed along similar methodological lines. Given the implied juxtaposition between emotions and rational thinking, the role of emotions in the process of knowledge production has often been trivialized in more traditional approaches to the subject. Through a broad geographical and chronological approach, spanning from prognostic texts in the Carolingian period to stock market speculation in early-twentiethcentury United States, this volume demonstrates the important role of emotions in the history of science. By bringing together cultural historians of knowledge, emotions, finance, and global intellectual history, Threatened Knowledge functions as a useful tool for all students and scholars of the history of knowledge and science on a global scale.

2016. Darkness and Illumination: The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Medieval and Early Modern World. Proceedings of the 2015 MEMSA Student Conference. Eds Hannah Piercy, Abigail Richards and Abigail Steed. MEMSA Journal (2).

This publication stems from the Medieval and Early Modern Student Association (MEMSA) at Durham University. The conference papers which these articles are based on were originally presented at the ninth annual MEMSA Student Conference, hosted at Durham University, 15–17 July 2015. CONTENTS – Hannah Piercy, Abigail Richards and Abigail Steed, ‘Darkness and Illumination’, 7–13 – Rutger Kramer, ‘“Ecce Fabula!” Problem-Solving By Numbers in the Carolingian World: The Case of the Propositiones ad Acuendos Iuvenes’, 15–40 – Curtis Runstedler, ‘Merlin the Scientist?: Magic and Medieval Science in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae’, 41–61 – Kevin R. Wittmann, ‘“Closest to Where the Sun Sets”: The Fortunate Islands and the Limits of the World in Medieval Geography and Cartography’, 63–80 – Kevin E. Sheehan, ‘From Ecclesiastical Cosmography to Scientific Cartography: The First Medieval Maps Compiled from Empirical Observations’, 81–106 – Thomas Colville, ‘The Gendered Pursuit of Knowledge: Anne Kingsmill and Triumphs of Female Wit’, 107–131 Publisher: Durham: Medieval & Early Modern Student Association, 2016 Journal Name: MEMSA Journal (2) Publication Name: Darkness and Illumination: The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Medieval and Early Modern World