Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment


Book Description

'Curiosity' and 'wonder' are topics of increasing interest and importance to Renaissance and Enlightenment historians. Conspicuous in a host of disciplines from history of science and technology to history of art, literature, and society, both have assumed a prominent place in studies of the Early Modern period. This volume brings together an international group of scholars to investigate the various manifestations of, and relationships between, 'curiosity' and 'wonder' from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Focused case studies on texts, objects and individuals explore the multifaceted natures of these themes, highlighting the intense fascination and continuing scrutiny to which each has been subjected over three centuries. From instances of curiosity in New World exploration to the natural wonders of 18th-century Italy, Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment locates its subjects in a broad geographical and disciplinary terrain. Taken together, the essays presented here construct a detailed picture of two complex themes, demonstrating the extent to which both have been transformed and reconstituted, often with dramatic results.




The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment


Book Description

The original idea for a conference on the "shapes of knowledge" dates back over ten years to conversations with the late Charles Schmitt of the Warburg Institute. What happened to the classifications of the sciences between the time of the medieval Studium and that of the French Encyclopedie is a complex and highly abstract question; but posing it is an effective way of mapping and evaluating long term intellectual changes, especially those arising from the impact of humanist scholarship, the new science of the seventeenth century, and attempts to evaluate, to apply, to reconcile, and to institutionalize these rival and interacting traditions. Yet such patterns and transformations cannot be well understood from the heights of the general history of ideas. Within the ~eneral framework of the organization of knowledge the map must be filled in by particular explorations and soundings, and our project called for a conference that would combine some encyclopedic (as well as interdisciplinary and inter national) breadth with scholarly and technical depth.




The Renaissance


Book Description




The Elegance of Curiosity


Book Description

Curiosity! In whatever way you would think of it, still comes to one thing – a strong desire to experience or learn something unusual or interesting. It is embedded in our day to-day-life. Our lives would be boring without it. This brings about an interesting question … Did curiosity really kill the Cat or did the Cat die of natural causes and how can we be sure about it? Does curiosity mean going into other people's privacy to dig out dirty secrets with which to threaten them? This book explores these and many more questions.This book was written in genuine appreciation of the cumulative effect of the elegance of curiosity and creativity in the arts, music industry, news and social media, earth and space exploration, medicine, architecture, engineering, science and technology and others, on which the edifice of our modern civilization is built. The contributions of people in different fields have made this planet a better place for living. Their contributions have given us freedom from inefficiency, mental servitude, nakedness, boredom, ignorance, hunger, disease and freedom from traversing thousands of miles on foot or horses. Read this book for your enjoyment, entertainment and enlightenment. It is a thrilling nonfiction book. If The Elegance of Curiosity comes your way, get it … then you will believe that, indeed, there are incredible wonders that we take for granted!




The Enlightenment


Book Description

What are the defining characteristics of the sprawling era known as the Middle Ages? What sets ancient Egypt apart from other ancient civilizations? And what is the legacy of the twentieth-century genocide known as the Holocaust? These are some of the ideas explored in Understanding World History, a series that surveys the political, social, and cultural trends of major periods and events in world history. Primary and secondary source quotes bring historical events to life. Source notes, a bibliography for further research, and index provide additional tools for student researchers. Book jacket.




Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750


Book Description

The authors explore the ways in which European naturalists, from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, used oddities and marvels to envision and explain the world.




A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders


Book Description

"The first book to situate early American experimental science in the context of a transatlantic public sphere, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders offers a view of the origins of American science and the cultural meaning of the American Enlightenment."--BOOK JACKET.




Curiosity & Discovery


Book Description




Peripheral Wonders


Book Description

This book expands traditional conceptions of the Enlightenment by examining the roles of wonder and Jesuit missionary conceptions of the Enlightenment by examining the century in a production of knowledge that serves both intellectual and religious functions. Ewalt analyzes a variety of classical and sacred rhetorical techniques for vivid persuasion that illuminate the simultaneously spiritual and scientific discourse employed by Joseph Gumilla in El Orinoco ilustrado (1741, 45), a text that concretizes an eclectic, Catholic Enlightenment that unites sentiment and reason, allows for emotion within scientific inquiry, and employs the strategy of wonder to accumulate, enumerate, and disseminate knowledge. Ewalt's work complements and extends studies proposing new and more inclusive Enlightenment models that challenge secular prejudices and reconsiders the assumption of European centrality by taking into account the Americas and other peripheral areas where modernity was redefined rather.




Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750


Book Description

Discusses how European scientists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonders, monsters, curiosities, marvels, and other phenomena to envision the natural world.