Sponsored by the Harvard History Department, the Harvard German department, the German Science Foundation (DFG) and the Henkel foundation (Düsseldorf), an interdisciplinary two-place conference on Historicizing Ignorance in Late Medieval and Early Modern History will take place at Harvard University, Robinson Hall and the German Historical Institute Paris. The conference seeks to address how ignorance about phenomena in different epistemic fields of the late medieval and early modern world was recognized (or not), used and coped with, differently from modern times. The Harvard part is devoted to the fields of historiography, the information management of early modern states and empires, on decision making under ignorance, political discourses dealing with and reacting to unknowns, early modern natural science, the coping with ignorance and silence from canon law to continental common law, and in several case studies on humanism, coping with ignorances in travel writing and translations as well as in the visual arts.
Attendance is free, but for reasons of calculation please register by January 17, zwierlein@fas.harvard.edu
9:00-10.45 Cornel Zwierlein (Harvard/Bochum): Short introductory note
