Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources, the transformative successor to Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History (first published in 1964), provides a unique venue for scholars to offer fresh readings of evidence from the period 400–1600. This annual is dedicated to the fundamental scholarship of analysis and interpretation led by direct engagement with the sources—written, visual, material—in any form, from editions, translations, and commentaries to reports, notes, and reflections. By foregrounding the most basic approach of working outwards from the evidence, it aims to foster conversations across disciplines, regions, and periods, as well as to become a reference point for original approaches and new discoveries.
This supplementary volume comprises essays on sources from the pre-modern world authored by members of the Medieval Studies Research Group, University of Lincoln, to mark the launch of the new (fourth) series.
It is often assumed that natural philosophy was the forerunner of early modern natural sciences. But where did these sciences’ systematic observation and experimentation get their starts? In Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe, the laboratories, workshops, and marketplaces emerge as arenas where hands-on experience united with higher learning. In an age when chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and botany intersected with mining, metallurgy, pharmacy, and gardening, materials were objects that crossed disciplines.
Here, the contributors tell the stories of metals, clay, gunpowder, pigments, and foods, and thereby demonstrate the innovative practices of technical experts, the development of the consumer market, and the formation of the observational and experimental sciences in the early modern period. Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe showcases a broad variety of forms of knowledge, from ineffable bodily skills and technical competence to articulated know-how and connoisseurship, from methods of measuring, data gathering, and classification to analytical and theoretical knowledge. By exploring the hybrid expertise involved in the making, consumption, and promotion of various materials, and the fluid boundaries they traversed, the book offers an original perspective on important issues in the history of science, medicine, and technology.
The materials of this case-book are, in the main, familiar; but they have been organized upon a novel plan. Starting with the medieval actions of debt and covenant, the book traces the evolution of the ideas underlying these two actions through the more flexible action of assumption to the form which they have assumed in modern law. It next deals with the interpretation of both formal and informal contracts, with the remedies of specific performance, damages, and rescission, with the all-pervasive policy against forfeitures, and finally with the methods by which contract obligations may be altered or released. After contracts involving two parties only have been thus examined, the book proceeds to contracts which involve three parties, including promises for the benefit of strangers, assignments, and promises addressed in general terms to persons to be thereafter ascertained. There is a final chapter on illegal contracts. The book was prepared with an eye to the revised curriculum announced in the 1938 catalogue of the Harvard Law School, and with the hope that it would serve as an effective introduction to later courses in the fields of commercial, banking, and insurance law.
Life would not exist without sensitive, or soft, matter. All biological structures depend on it, including red blood globules, lung fluid, and membranes. So do industrial emulsions, gels, plastics, liquid crystals, and granular materials. What makes sensitive matter so fascinating is its inherent versatility. Shape-shifting at the slightest provocation, whether a change in composition or environment, it leads a fugitive existence.
Physicist Michel Mitov brings drama to molecular gastronomy (as when two irreconcilable materials are mixed to achieve the miracle of mayonnaise) and offers answers to everyday questions, such as how does paint dry on canvas, why does shampoo foam better when you “repeat,” and what allows for the controlled release of drugs? Along the way we meet a futurist cook, a scientist with a runaway imagination, and a penniless inventor named Goodyear who added sulfur to latex, quite possibly by accident, and created durable rubber.
As Mitov demonstrates, even religious ritual is a lesson in the surprising science of sensitive matter. Thrice yearly, the reliquary of St. Januarius is carried down cobblestone streets from the Cathedral to the Church of St. Clare in Naples. If all goes as hoped—and since 1389 it often has—the dried blood contained in the reliquary’s largest vial liquefies on reaching its destination, and Neapolitans are given a reaffirming symbol of renewal.
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