Curating the Enlightenment
Johann Daniel Major and the Experimental Century

Uncovers how late seventeenth-century scholars crafted the research university as a haven for critical inquiry.

Vera Keller (Author)

9781009506830, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 November 2024

414 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.7 cm, 0.74 kg

'… a major accomplishment of intellectual history.… Recommended.' J. T. Rosenthal, CHOICE

How did the research universities of the Enlightenment come into being? And what debt do they owe to scholars of the previous era? Focusing on the career of German polymath Johann Daniel Major (1634–93), Curating the Enlightenment uncovers how late seventeenth-century scholars crafted the research university as a haven for critical inquiry in defiance of political and economic pressures. Abandoning the surety of established intellectual practice, this 'experimental century' saw Major and his peers reshaping fragments of knowledge into new perspectives. Across new disciplines, from experimental philosophy to archaeology and museology, they reexamined what knowledge was, who it was for, and how it was to be stored, managed, accessed, judged, and transformed. Although later typecast as Baroque obstacles to be overcome by the Enlightenment, these academics arranged knowledge in dynamic infrastructures that encouraged its further advancement in later generations, including our own. This study examines these seventeenth-century practices as part of a continuous intellectual tradition and reconceptualizes our understanding of the Enlightenment.

Part I. Introduction: 1. The dream of the butterfly
2. Major's life and setting
Part II. Approaches to Knowledge: 3. The making of a research scholar
4. The history of learning and research infrastructures
Part III. Reworking Disciplines: 5. Anthropology
6. Lithology
7. Archaeology
Part IV. Spaces of Knowledge: 8. Experimental philosophy
9. Museology
Part V. Conclusion: 10. The light of nature and the uses of knowledge
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]