Neighborhoods of Science: Knowledge and Practice in Francis Bacon's London, 1561-1626

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

SES 00-80813 - Deborah E. Harkness (University of California, Davis) - "Neighborhoods of Science: Knowledge and Practice in Francis Bacon's London, 1561-1626" This award supports a study exploring the content and practice of science in early modern England, prior to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Through an analysis of intellectual history sources (manuscript treatises and published scientific works) as well as social history sources (parish, guild, court, and civic records), "Neighborhoods of Science" aims to reconfigure dramatically our understanding of English science during the lifetime of its most important scientific philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon. It will do so by focusing on practitioners in the city of London, rather than on the royal court, and on a wide-range of scientific practitioners, rather than just a few university-trained philosophers. The study thus focuses on practice as well as theory, and popular as well as elite interest in the natural world and its properties. During the year of the award the PI will visit archives and libraries in England and search for relevant materials, will create a database of London's scientific practitioners, and will develop a digital map of the city's scientific communities, using the information from the database. "Neighborhoods of Science" thus aims to promote a new socio-cultural methodology in the history of science, take advantage of the tools of spatial analysis, and uncover previously unknown worlds of intellectual exchange and collaboration.