scholarly journals Travniki, Travniki and Travniki: Herbals, Herbalists and Herbaria in Seventeenth-Century and Eighteenth-Century Russia

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 58-76
Author(s):  
Rachel Koroloff
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Medical Botany ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
Primary Documents

This essay provides a sustained investigation of the term travnik, a capacious word that came to mean herbalist, herbal and herbarium over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Though different in physical form, all three were united during this period by the body of knowledge they contained about the botanical world. Taken togetherthey reveal the ways in which knowledge of plants, from folk collecting traditions, to medical botany, to binomial nomenclature, was generated in the productive tension between foreign expertise and local knowledge. The focus here on translation highlights the diverse array of influences that contributed to the early modern Russian conception of the natural world. The travnik as herbal is explored through two centuries of secondary sources, while the travnik as herbalist relies heavily on published primary documents. The third section on the travnik as herbarium focuses on eighteenth century herbaria and the transposition of new scientific methods onto older forms of knowledge making.

scholarly journals “None of Them Could Say They Ever Had Seen Them, but Only Had It from Others”: Encounters with Animals in Eighteenth-Century Natural Histories of Greenland

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 2024
Author(s):  
Helen Parish
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Natural Histories

The pages of early modern natural histories expose the plasticity of the natural world, and the variegated nature of the encounter between human and animal in this period. Descriptions of the flora and fauna reflect this kind of negotiated encounter between the world that is seen, that which is heard about, and that which is constructed from the language of the sacred text of scripture. The natural histories of Greenland that form the basis of this analysis exemplify the complexity of human–animal encounters in this period, and the intersections that existed between natural and unnatural, written authority and personal testimony, and culture, belief, and ethnography in natural histories. They invite a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which animals and people interact in the making of culture, and demonstrate the contribution made by such texts to the study of animal encounters, cultures, and concepts. This article explores the intersection between natural history and the work of Christian mission in the eighteenth century, and the connections between personal encounter, ethnography, history, and oral and written tradition. The analysis demonstrates that European natural histories continued to be anthropocentric in content and tone, the product of what was believed, as much as what was seen.

Pre-Chemistry Concepts and Medical Therapy among Ancient Physicians through the Pre-Socratic Philosophers

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 1470-1477
Author(s):  
Luigi Santacroce ◽  
Lucrezia Bottalico ◽  
Kastriot Haxhirexha ◽  
Skender Topi ◽  
Ioannis A. Charitos
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Medical Therapy ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Over Time

Background: Chemistry as experimental science began in the seventeenth century, when it began moving away from being one of the alchemical doctrines and toward analyzing matter and its transformations using scientific methods. Previously, the ancient Pre-Socratic philosophy through observation of nature was concerned with the laws that govern the natural world and the property of matter. Later, the Hellenistic Alexandrian culture took possession of the Hermetic doctrines of the Egyptians, mixing them with pre-Socratic thought and Gnosticism. At this historical moment, therefore, there was a fusion of the Greek philosophical patrimony and the Hellenistic and Alexandrian influences on medicine. The Hermetic gnosis evolved over time to become alchemy and then to usher in the birth of chemical science. Many doctors were wandering philosophers who dealt with cosmogony to understand the body and diseases and to discover new healing drugs for treatment, and thus they were the first chemist therapists. Methods: The influence of ancient physicians through the pre-Socratic philosophy for these prochemical theories and practice has been researched through ancient texts, so these texts have been referenced to determine the legacy of paleo-chemicals doctrines. Results: The study of various texts in particular from the Pre-Socratic age and the eminent physicians underline that, despite a different approach to the cosmogonic concepts of nature and the matter, the medicine of that age had an important influence on chemistry as an experimental science, especially concerning therapy with drugs. Conclusions: The Pre-Socratic philosophers have influenced the medical practice and guided it toward the concept of the properties of matter for medical treatment and an understanding of the causes of diseases.

Scientific method

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Hatfield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Instrument Making ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Careful Observation ◽  
Body Of Knowledge

Procedures for attaining scientific knowledge are known as scientific methods. These methods include formulating theories and testing them against observation or experiment. Ancient and medieval thinkers called any systematic body of knowledge a ‘science’, and their methods were aimed at knowledge in general. According to the most common model for scientific knowledge, formulated by Aristotle, induction yields universal propositions from which all knowledge in a field can be deduced. This model was refined by medieval and early modern thinkers, and further developed in the nineteenth century by Whewell and Mill. As Kuhn observed, idealized accounts of scientific method must be distinguished from descriptions of what scientists actually do. The methods of careful observation and experiment have been in use from antiquity, but became more widespread after the seventeenth century. Developments in instrument making, in mathematics and statistics, in terminology, and in communication technology have altered the methods and the results of science.

scholarly journals ‘Magic coins’ and ‘magic squares’: the discovery of astrological sigils in the Oldenburg Letters

2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
The Body ◽  
Perceived Efficacy ◽  
Magic Squares ◽  
Early Modern Medicine

Enclosed in a 1673 letter to Henry Oldenburg were two drawings of a series of astrological sigils, coins and amulets from the collection of Strasbourg mathematician Julius Reichelt (1637–1719). As portrayals of particular medieval and early modern sigils are relatively rare, this paper will analyse the role of these medals in medieval and early modern medicine, the logic behind their perceived efficacy, and their significance in early modern astrological and cabalistic practice. I shall also demonstrate their change in status in the late seventeenth century from potent magical healing amulets tied to the mysteries of the heavens to objects kept in a cabinet for curiosos. The evolving perception of the purpose of sigils mirrored changing early modern beliefs in the occult influences of the heavens upon the body and the natural world, as well as the growing interests among virtuosi in collecting, numismatics and antiquities.

Remembering the Body: Eighteenth-Century Elocution and the Oral Tradition

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Oral Reading ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
John Walker

Abstract: This article revisits eighteenth-century elocutionists Thomas Sheridan and John Walker by examining their work in two contexts: 1) classical imitation and oral reading traditions that engaged the body and emotions; and 2) early modern views of the faculties, particularly the faculties of the imagination and taste. These contexts, I argue, are essential to understanding the social and ethical claims the elocutionists made to support the revival of elocution and to understanding how they perceived their own practices.

scholarly journals Historical Gaps and Non-existent Sources: The Case of the Chaudrie Court in French India

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 979-1006
Author(s):  
Danna Agmon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Body ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Court Records ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Archival History ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article develops a typology of historical and archival gaps—physical, historiographical, and epistemological—to consider how non-existent sources are central to understanding colonial law and governance. It does so by examining the institutional and archival history of a court known as the Chaudrie in the French colony of Pondichéry in India in the eighteenth century, and integrating problems that are specific to the study of legal history—questions pertaining to jurisdiction, codification, evidence, and sovereignty—with issues all historians face regarding power and the making of archives. Under French rule, Pondichéry was home to multiple judicial institutions, administered by officials of the French East Indies Company. These included the Chaudrie court, which existed at least from 1700 to 1827 as a forum where French judges were meant to dispense justice according to local Tamil modes of dispute resolution. However, records of this court prior to 1766 have not survived. By drawing on both contemporaneous mentions of the Chaudrie and later accounts of its workings, this study centers missing or phantom sources, severed from the body of the archive by political, judicial, and bureaucratic decisions. It argues that the Chaudrie was a court where jurisdiction was decoupled from sovereignty, and this was the reason it did not generate a state-managed and preserved archive of court records for itself until the 1760s. The Chaudrie’s early history makes visible a relationship between law and its archive that is paralleled by approaches to colonial governance in early modern French Empire.

scholarly journals Envy's pathology: Historical contexts

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Lina Minou
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Status ◽  
Century Health ◽  
The Way

This article is concerned with the physicality of envy primarily in early –modern, but also in eighteenth-century health contexts. The discussion brings together descriptions of the effects of envy on the body of the envier, mainly from works of physiology and health preservation, but also from literary and spiritual writings. These depictions of envy are studied beyond their symbolism and with a view to establish whether they are meaningful according to the medical theories of the time in which they occur. The discussion begins by acknowledging the status of envy as a ‘disease’ and looks to the specific ways in which the discourse of envy conveys this sense. I find that in the early modern discourse envy is always pathological, that is, it is experienced as disease and signifies disease in general and several diseases in particular. Moreover, envy is uniquely placed to convey pathology on account of its being connected to inherently pathogenic elements of the humoural theory. Specifically, envy is physiologically connected to melancholy, and the way it is presented comes close to attributes assigned to black bile. In addition, envy realizes pathology, the occurrence of disease in the body, by impairing the vital process of digestion and thus depriving the person from proper nourishment and sustenance. The analysis further considers how this impairment of the body fits with the physiological manifestation of envy as ‘corrosion’ and ‘consumption’. Finding commonalities with other maladies mediated by these physiological signs the article concludes by considering the function of pathology in the conception of early modern envy.

The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Celenza
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Novel Reading

Christopher Celenza is one of the foremost contemporary scholars of the Renaissance. His ambitious new book focuses on the body of knowledge which we now call the humanities, charting its roots in the Italian Renaissance and exploring its development up to the Enlightenment. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the author shows how thinkers like Lorenzo Valla and Angelo Poliziano developed innovative ways to read texts closely, paying attention to historical context, developing methods to determine a text's authenticity, and taking the humanities seriously as a means of bettering human life. Alongside such novel reading practices, technology – the invention of printing with moveable type – fundamentally changed perceptions of truth. Celenza also reveals how luminaries like Descartes, Diderot, and D'Alembert – as well as many lesser-known scholars – challenged traditional ways of thinking. Celenza's authoritative narrative demonstrates above all how the work of the early modern humanist philosophers had a profound impact on the general quest for human wisdom. His magisterial volume will be essential reading for all those who value the humanities and their fascinating history.

Fashioning Enemies of the State: Investigating Sartorial Subversion in Soviet States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Pulver
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Body ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Youth Groups ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Harsh Criticism

As far back as 1867, early-modern fashion has been the subject of harsh criticism. In his Critique of Political Economy, Marx referred to fashion as “murderous” and as having “meaningless caprices” (Marx and Engels 1967). The Soviet states certainly recognized the importance of clothing to reflect and inform its citizens of the preferred modest lifestyle. The main purpose of this study is to analyze two specific cases of sartorial resistance in two Soviet societies. Specifically, I will be examining the case of Allerleirauh (1980-89) in East Germany, and the Stilyagi (1940s-1960s) in Soviet Russia. In order to test the differences and similarities in the sartorial subversions, I will analyze a number of primary and secondary documents. There are four forms of primary documents that I will analyze: state-run magazines, periodicals, and photographs (both state-sponsored, and fringe), from the GDR and Soviet Russia. My interpretation— of the visual and textual responses to the youth groups who subverted the sartorial codes of the GDR and in Soviet Russia— has led me to propose two main speculative-conclusions. First, the responses by the government, such as the satirical cartoons of the Stilyagi, reveal the extent to which government officials recognized, and felt threatened by, the potential potency of dress to cause political disturbance. Second, the reactions of condemnation towards the fashionably-dissident makes salient the recognition that visual culture and semiotics in fashion, particularly when the body (as a sort of canvas) is implicated, can yield politically-threatening influence.

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