ORGANIZATION TEAM: Ann Blair (Harvard), Anja-Silvia Goeing (Zurich/Harvard) (PI), Martin Mulsow (Erfurt)

ADMINISTRATION: Stefan Müller (Erfurt/Gotha) and Markus Meumann (Erfurt/Gotha)

CONFERENCE WEBSITE: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/sennertsworld

Sennert (1572-1637) was one of the most prolific, innovative and influential physicians of the period. A professor at Wittenberg, he played an important part in developing a precocious atomic theory, transformed medicine through the use of chemistry, worked in anatomy and botany, published numerous successful medical handbooks and treatises, affected everyday medical practice, and had more than one hundred students who spread his methods and ideas through large parts of Europe. He wrote and taught a combination of classical medicine and new empirical knowledge, enriching and elaborating the views of such canonical medical authors as Galen, Hippocrates and Aristotle.

Recent scholarship in the fields of the history of medicine, intellectual history, social history, the history of the book and publishing, and the history of education have begun in their discrete ways to reveal the extraordinary ramifications of Sennert’s work. But there has yet to be a synthesis of his contribution that properly identifies his importance to the history of medicine and its related sciences. The conference seeks to build this synthesis by bringing together the major scholars who have worked on different aspects of Sennert and his milieu. Using the techniques of the recently developing fields of the history of information and Wissensgeschichte, it analyses Sennert’s contribution to the history of medicine systemically, i.e. by attending to the institutional and intellectual structures that shaped the construction of knowledge. The history of information focuses on the processes of knowledge creation and the mechanisms of its subsequent dissemination and reception. It sees these (in this case medical issues) not just as matters of intellectual problem solving (important as these may be), but as parts of a process that produces knowledge through techniques and practices – laboratory work, experimentation, observation, scholarly disputation – that help explain how new knowledge is created. Such knowledge is not treated statically but seen as part of an on-going process whose history involves channels, mechanisms, and networks by which such knowledge is spread. The aim, in short, is not just to identify the content of (medical) knowledge but to reconstruct its history within a larger system of information.

To that end the project for the conference is divided into four related fields of inquiry: the first looks at Sennert’s position between ancient and new knowledge in his medical and natural philosophal inquiries, the second at medical and chemical practices, the third investigates Sennert’s relations to medical publications and the book market, and the final section, devoted to networks, maps the mechanisms and connections that reveal the remarkable scope of Sennert’s influence. Throughout the aim is to use the source-rich case of Sennert to look at larger processes of knowledge creation and dissemination.

Author: Anja-Silvia Goeing

To register for this conference, please send a note to the conference administration office:
Stefan Müller at stefan.mueller@uni-erfurt.de
https://www.uni-erfurt.de/forschungszentrum-gotha/