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Motion and Knowledge in the Changing Early Modern WorldTravel as a Basis for Atheism: Free-Thinking as Deterritorialization in the Early Radical Enlightenment

Motion and Knowledge in the Changing Early Modern World: Travel as a Basis for Atheism:... [The early modern radical savant did not travel so much as he read travel narratives. From Montaigne’s cannibals to Locke’s talking parrot, from Leibniz’s plans to create a race of “warrior slaves” to Diderot’s utopian Voyage de Bougainville, a kind of ‘science fiction’ or ‘deterritorialization’ of the narrative of the familiar, Eurocentric, Plato-to-Hegel narrative of Western philosophy can be discerned. A key feature of these artificial travel narratives is that they serve as a basis for proclaiming atheism (and China plays a well-known role here). The radical savant described here is neither the solitary meditator, nor the participant in communal knowledge-gathering projects for national glory (Bacon, Linnaeus). He (for it is always a he in this case) is less a producer of a stable, cumulative body of knowledge than a destabilizer of forms of existing knowledge.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Motion and Knowledge in the Changing Early Modern WorldTravel as a Basis for Atheism: Free-Thinking as Deterritorialization in the Early Radical Enlightenment

Part of the Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Book Series (volume 30)
Editors: Gal, Ofer; Zheng, Yi
Wolfe, Charles T.
Motion and Knowledge in the Changing Early Modern World — Sep 30, 2013
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References (118)

Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Copyright
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
ISBN
978-94-007-7382-0
Pages
141 –167
DOI
10.1007/978-94-007-7383-7_8
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The early modern radical savant did not travel so much as he read travel narratives. From Montaigne’s cannibals to Locke’s talking parrot, from Leibniz’s plans to create a race of “warrior slaves” to Diderot’s utopian Voyage de Bougainville, a kind of ‘science fiction’ or ‘deterritorialization’ of the narrative of the familiar, Eurocentric, Plato-to-Hegel narrative of Western philosophy can be discerned. A key feature of these artificial travel narratives is that they serve as a basis for proclaiming atheism (and China plays a well-known role here). The radical savant described here is neither the solitary meditator, nor the participant in communal knowledge-gathering projects for national glory (Bacon, Linnaeus). He (for it is always a he in this case) is less a producer of a stable, cumulative body of knowledge than a destabilizer of forms of existing knowledge.]

Published: Sep 30, 2013

Keywords: Scientific Revolution; Natural Philosopher; Global Reach; Anonymous Author; Radical Savant

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