The Materiality of Scientific Knowledge: Image-Text-Book, University of Pennsylvania, September 30– October 1, 2016
Throughout the long history of scientific investigation, knowledge was formulated, shared, legitimated, and disseminated in manuscript and printed text, as well as in paintings, drawings, and engravings. These material factors —the conditions of writing, printing, and image making —underwrite the exchange and dissemination of scientific knowledge from classical antiquity to the nineteenth century. This cross-disciplinary symposium will investigate the myriad, often contradictory, vocabularies we use to analyze images and text in scientific writing. Its goal is to promote more fruitful interdisciplinary, collaborative work in the history of scientific thought.
This symposium is generously sponsored by the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania; the Penn Humanities Forum; and Rare Book School, University of Virginia, with funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, through The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography.