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Motion and Knowledge in the Changing Early Modern World‘How Very Little He Can Learn’: Exotic Visitors and the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge in Eighteenth Century London

Motion and Knowledge in the Changing Early Modern World: ‘How Very Little He Can Learn’: Exotic... [Taking the animadversions of Samuel Johnson as its starting point, this essay explores an eighteenth-century skepticism regarding the possibility of exchanges of knowledge between metropolitan and peripheral societies. It suggests that encounters with Inuit and Oceanic traveller-savants in the streets and salons of London lead both members of the Royal Society and patrons of the arts to question the translatability of ideas across cultural boundaries, and to articulate a distinction between ethnographic and practical knowledge. It argues that this meta-critical dimension to the dialogues between Europeans and visitors from the peripheries of Empire ultimately constituted one of the most nuanced intellectual exchanges instigated by Enlightenment travel.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Motion and Knowledge in the Changing Early Modern World‘How Very Little He Can Learn’: Exotic Visitors and the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge in Eighteenth Century London

Part of the Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Book Series (volume 30)
Editors: Gal, Ofer; Zheng, Yi
Smith, Vanessa
Motion and Knowledge in the Changing Early Modern World — Sep 30, 2013
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References (19)

Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Copyright
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
ISBN
978-94-007-7382-0
Pages
73 –91
DOI
10.1007/978-94-007-7383-7_5
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Taking the animadversions of Samuel Johnson as its starting point, this essay explores an eighteenth-century skepticism regarding the possibility of exchanges of knowledge between metropolitan and peripheral societies. It suggests that encounters with Inuit and Oceanic traveller-savants in the streets and salons of London lead both members of the Royal Society and patrons of the arts to question the translatability of ideas across cultural boundaries, and to articulate a distinction between ethnographic and practical knowledge. It argues that this meta-critical dimension to the dialogues between Europeans and visitors from the peripheries of Empire ultimately constituted one of the most nuanced intellectual exchanges instigated by Enlightenment travel.]

Published: Sep 30, 2013

Keywords: Amicable Sign; Cultural Knowledge; Shared Language; Foreign Visitor; Society Island

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