Virtues as a Lens: Exploring Science, Scholarship, and Politics under Soviet Domination
Reflects on how to use virtues as a lens in historical research, i.e., to ask what virtues underpin scholarly and political discourses and practices.
Tagged: authority
Classical Knowledge, Power, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Dutch Rabbinic Education
Tell me, o Muse, of the man … (Homer)
Francis Bacons belief that knowledge is power is one of the great epistemic mottos of all time. In early nineteenth-century Jewish Amsterdam, where civic emancipation had overturned the old corporate hierarchies, the rabbinic elite soon came to experience its merciless truth…. Continue reading
The Text as Fieldwork: The Book of Nature in Early Modern Japan
In early modern Japan, the study of nature, known at the time as honzōgaku, was primarily a bookish enterprise. The work of scholars who studied rocks and minerals, herbs and plants, flowers and trees,...
Selecting and Organizing Recipes in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Compendia of Medicine and Alchemy
Ancient recipes are usually short texts; one can easily find more than one recipe written on a single papyrus sheet or on the page of a Byzantine manuscript. Despite their brevity, however, they open...
Hunters, Inquisitors, and Scholars: The Construction and Demarcation of Expertise in the Manuals of Frederick II and Bernard Gui
At first glance, the practical manual by Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) and the one by the inquisitor Bernard Gui (1261–1331) do not seem to have any specific features in common. Whereas the first treatise,...
Constructing Authority in Early British Aviation
By definition, experts play a vital role in creating, sustaining, and disseminating any particular body of knowledge. But what constitutes an expert? How is authority obtained? Does this change over time? There are no...
Religious Knowledge in Historical Perspective
My year began with a session at the 131st Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association on “the dynamics of religious knowledge” in the modern era, a panel I organized with Simone Lässig. The...
