Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy

The shift from the purposefully disordered Kunstkammer or curiosity cabinet of the Renaissance to the ordered Enlightenment museum is well known. What has to be explored fully is the process through which this transformation occurred. Collective Wisdom is an analysis of how and why members of scholarly societies such as the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the Leopoldina collected specimens of the natural world, art, and antiquarian objects in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These scholarly societies, founded before knowledge became subspecialised, had many common members. We will focus upon how their exploration of natural philosophy, antiquarianism, and medicine were reflected in collecting practice, the formation of early museums and the categorisation and dissemination of knowledge.