Theatrum Scientiarum: English Edition #1: Theatrum Scientiarum English Edition: Volume 1: Collection Laboratory Theater Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century

The series aspires to examine the fundamental crossover of art and science in a new way. The premise is that in the course of the reconstitution of science in the 17th century, practices of representation, observation, and medical competence emerged with productive forces that can only be adequately described within an interdisciplinary perspective. In this first volume, European and North American scholars of history, the social sciences, the humanities, and natural sciences present studies revolving around the cabinet of wonders, the laboratory, and the stage as localized settings of knowledge in the 17th century. The 25 papers were delivered to a conference in Berlin, and published in German in 2003.
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This volume launches a new, eight-volume series entitled Theatrum Scientiarum on the history of science and the media which has arisen from the work of the Berlin special research project on Performative Cultures under the aegis of the Theatre Studies Department of the Free University. The volume examines the role of space in the constitution of knowledge in the early modern age. Kunstkammern (art and curiosities cabinets), laboratories and stages arose in the 17th century as instruments of research and representation. There is, however, still a lack of precise descriptions of the epistemic contribution made by material and immaterial space in the performance of knowledge. Therefore, the authors present a novel view of the conditions surrounding the creation of these spatial forms. Account is taken bothof the institutional framework of these spaces and their placement within the history of ideas, the architectural models and the modular differentiations, and the scientific consequences of particular design decisions. Manifold paths are followed between the location of the observer in the representational space of science and the organization in time and space of sight, speech and action in the canon of European theatrical forms. Not only is an account given of the mutual architectural and intellectual influence of the spaces of knowledge and the performance spaces of art; they are also analyzed to ascertain what was possible in them and through them. This volume is the English translation of Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, B hne (de Gruyter, Berlin, 2003).