Archival Afterlives
Subtitle: Life, Death, and Knowledge-Making in Early Modern British Scientific and Medical Archives
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9789004324299
Subjects: Medicine, research
Description: Archival Afterlives' explores the posthumous fortunes of scientific and medical archives in early modern Britain. If early modern natural philosophers claimed all knowledge as their province, theirs was a paper empire. But how and why did naturalists engage with archives, and in particular, with the papers of their dead predecessors? This volume makes a firm case for expanding what counts as scientific labour, integrating scribes, archivist, library keepers, editors, and friends and family of deceased naturalists into the history of science. It shows how early modern natural philosophers pursued new natural knowledge in dialogue with their recent material past. Finally, it demonstrates the sustaining importance of archival institutions in the growth and development of the ?New Sciences.?