Early modern Universities and the Sciences

Early Modern Universities and the Scientiae sheds new light onto little-studied higher institutions of learning in Central and Western Europe. Lands such as Finland and Portugal, or Universities like Vienna and Trnava, have attracted so far less attention than they deserve. The book demonstrates that the history of better-known Universities, like Padua or Paris, benefits from a much broader background in which to see, for example, the impact of alumni networks, or of far-reaching echoes of reforms across the Atlantic. This collection of essays aims to foster a deeper understanding of some of the ways in which the intertwined relation of philology and experiments gave rise to institutionalised forms of knowledge. Essays deal with both academic practices as well as university reforms stemming from the increasingly widespread knowledge methodology of marrying the study of texts to observations of natural phenomena. Both were means to amend and improve knowledge from the Classics (ancient, medieval or contemporary). To study this phenomenon in its instutionalised setting requires a multidisciplinary approach that mirrors exactly those very knowledge practices it purports to come to grips with. As such, Early Modern Universities and the Scientiae is a typical scholarly product of the ever growing contemporary academic community of Scientiae (scientiae.co.uk).