Collection, Laboratory, Theater: Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century (Theatrum Scientiarum: English Edition) (Theatrum Scientiarum: English Edition)

This volume launches a new, eight-volume series entitled Theatrum Scientiarum on the history of science and the media which has arisen from the work of the Berlin special research project on "Performative Cultures" under the aegis of the Theatre Studies Department of the Free University. The volume examines the role of space in the constitution of knowledge in the early modern age. "Kunstkammern" (art and curiosities cabinets), laboratories and stages arose in the 17th century as instruments of research and representation. There is, however, still a lack of precise descriptions of the epistemic contribution made by material and immaterial space in the performance of knowledge. Therefore, the authors present a novel view of the conditions surrounding the creation of these spatial forms. Account is taken both of the institutional framework of these spaces and their placement within the history of ideas, the architectural models and the modular differentiations, and the scientific consequences of particular design decisions. Manifold paths are followed between the location of the observer in the representational space of science and the organization in time and space of sight, speech and action in the canon of European theatrical forms. Not only is an account given of the mutual architectural and intellectual influence of the spaces of knowledge and the performance spaces of art; they are also analyzed to ascertain what was possible in them and through them. This volume is the English translation of Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne (de Gruyter, Berlin, 2003). Frontmatter Contents Space: The Final Frontier Kunstkammer – Laboratory – Theater in the ‘Theatrum Europaeum’: On the Transformation of Performative Space in the 17th Century The Virtual Laboratory: Thought Experiments in Seventeenth-Century Mechanics The Point: The Smallest Venue of Knowledge in the 17th Century (1585-1665) Anatomical Theatre as Experimental Space Scenes of Writing: The Florentine Uffizi as Kunstkammer, Laboratory, and Stage “Mentalmente architettato” – Thoughts in Physical Form: Immutable or Dynamic? The Case of the Library The Operatic Stage as an Experimental Space for Affections: About the Concepts of Affections Asserted by Athanasius Kircher and Claudio Monteverdi The Cartography of Emotions: Power, Play, and the Politics of Love in 17th Century France Universality and Territoriality: On the Architectonic of Academic Social Life Exemplified by the Brandenburg Universität der Völker, Wissenschaften und Künste (1666/67) The Known and Unknown Kunstkammer of Rudolf II Collections and the Surface of the Image: Pictorial Strategies in Early-Modern Wunderkammern Kunstkammer, Play-Palace, Shadow Theatre: Three Thought Loci by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz On the Representation of Knowledge in Athanasius Kircher Pythagorean Musical Theater: Space, Time, and Numerical Speculation in the Ancient Metaphysical Fashion Eucharist and Experiment: Spaces of Certainty in the 17th Century Artificial Intensity: Images, Instruments, and the Technology of Amplification The Metaphysics of Phenomena: Telescope and Microscope in the Works of Goethe, Leeuwenhoek and Hooke The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Missionary Convent as “Theatre of Conversion” Theaters of War: The Military-Entertainment Complex Science in its Social Space The Adventurous Relationship between Physics and Geometry: Newton’s Space Viewed by Present-Day Physics Material Culture, Theoretical Culture, and Delocalization World-Picture and World-Theater: Wonder, Vision, Knowledge Backmatter

This volume launches a new, eight-volume series entitled Theatrum Scientiarum on the history of science and the media which has arisen from the work of the Berlin special research project on "Performative Cultures" under the aegis of the Theatre Studies Department of the Free University.

The volume examines the role of space in the constitution of knowledge in the early modern age. "Kunstkammern" (art and curiosities cabinets), laboratories and stages arose in the 17th century as instruments of research and representation. There is, however, still a lack of precise descriptions of the epistemic contribution made by material and immaterial space in the performance of knowledge. Therefore, the authors present a novel view of the conditions surrounding the creation of these spatial forms. Account is taken bothof the institutional framework of these spaces and their placement within the history of ideas, the architectural models and the modular differentiations, and the scientific consequences of particular design decisions. Manifold paths are followed between the location of the observer in the representational space of science and the organization in time and space of sight, speech and action in the canon of European theatrical forms. Not only is an account given of the mutual architectural and intellectual influence of the spaces of knowledge and the performance spaces of art; they are also analyzed to ascertain what was possible in them and through them.

This volume is the English translation of Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne (de Gruyter, Berlin, 2003).

On December 2nd, 1696, Robert Hooke addressed an unusual speech to the Royal Society (that honourable London society whose weekly meetings had, since the middle of the seventeenth century, aimed to serve the progress of science through practical experimentation).