History of Knowledge I

Course goals

This course aims to help you to become critical global citizens. After completing this course, you can:

1. characterize different ways of knowing that have existed in the past, and analyze the relations between them, enabling them to reflect critically on current disciplinary relations and on how today’s global challenges may require creative combinations of different forms of knowledge.
2. use historical examples to argue that the historical development of science in Europe should be understood in a global perspective, enabling them to understand how cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary encounters generate new knowledge, and also to reflect on the conditions under which there may be meaningful exchange across borders that are at once geographical, cultural and epistemic.
3. show that science is not practiced in an ‘ivory tower’, but that forms of knowledge and knowledge-making practices are embedded in a wider societal context, enabling them to reflect on the place of science in today’s society and on their own social identity as citizen-scientists.

 

Content

The history of knowledge is concerned with the way in which people in all historical ages have thought about knowledge, collected and produced it, shared it, and sometimes lost it. This is by no means a linear or progressive process in the sense that knowledge always 'gets better' over time. Some kinds of knowledge are simply forgotten, get rejected, or are actively suppressed. To historians, all aspects of these processes are interesting: the way in which knowledge is acquired is equally relevant as the processes that lead to forgetting or rejecting knowledge. 
             
In History of Knowledge I, we cover – in chronological order - some key subjects in the history of knowledge from Late Antiquity to the dawn of the modern world. Of course it is impossible to offer an in-depth overview of more than a thousand years’ worth of developments, and neither can we do justice to these subjects on a global scale. We focus on the history of knowledge in Europe, but always acknowledging that this is only one part of the story. The history of knowledge developed in constant interaction with other parts of the world. The themes we have chosen are meant to show you how rich and varied this field of research is, and how much there is to discover.

 

Additional information

It’s not possible to register for this course during late enrolment.

Students of the MA History and Philosophy of Science, for registration please contact your programme coordinator during the enrolment period.