From the Archives of Scientific Diplomacy: Science and the Shared Interests of Samuel Hartlib’s London and Frederick Clodius’s Gottorf

Many historians have traced the accumulation of scientific archives via communication networks. Engines for communication in early modernity have included trade, the extrapolitical Republic of Letters, religious enthusiasm, and the centralization of large emerging information states. The communicati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Isis 2015-03, Vol.106 (1), p.17-42
Main Authors: Keller, Vera, Penman, Leigh T. I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alchemy
Archives
Centralization
Christianity
Clodius
Clodius, Frederick
Communication
Communication networks
Conceptualization
Cooperative Behavior
Diplomacy
England
Ephemerides
Germany
Global communication
Hartlib
Hartlib, Samuel
Historians
History of medicine and histology
History of science
History, 17th Century
Internationalization
Libraries
Negotiating
Neutrality
Politics
Polities
Protestantism
Religion and Science
Religious communities
Science - history
Social sciences
United Kingdom
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Summary:Many historians have traced the accumulation of scientific archives via communication networks. Engines for communication in early modernity have included trade, the extrapolitical Republic of Letters, religious enthusiasm, and the centralization of large emerging information states. The communication between Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, Duke Friedrich III of Gottorf-Holstein, and his key agent in England, Frederick Clodius, points to a less obvious but no less important impetus—the international negotiations of smaller states. Smaller states shaped communication networks in an international (albeit politically and religiously slanted) direction. Their networks of negotiation contributed to the internationalization of emerging science through a political and religious concept of shared interest. While interest has been central to social studies of science, interest itself has not often been historicized within the history of science. This case study demonstrates the co-production of science and society by tracing how period concepts of interest made science international.
ISSN:0021-1753
1545-6994
DOI:10.1086/681035