Wissen, Arbeit, Freundschaft Buchkatalog

Based on studies on the Royal Society in London, the Académie des Sciences in Paris and the Societät der Wissenschaften in Berlin, this volume examines the cultural practices and social behavioural patterns in the production of knowledge in natural science research in early modernity. The focus thereby lies not on the institutions themselves, but on the logics of action of quite diverse actors who participated in the production of knowledge. What was ultimately deemed to be knowledge, how it had to be produced and authenticated, was not determined alone by a circle of experts appointed to this end, but continuously negotiated between the various actors. Relational logics therefore played a major role both for the people involved and for the constitution of knowledge and knowledge objects. Understood thus, the history of science is opened up for a social, economic and cultural history in which the analytical categories (what is knowledge, what is a scholar, what is an academic institution) are historicised and dynamized.