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Date/Time
Date(s) - 19 Feb 2015
5:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Location
Columbia University Faculty House

Category(ies) No Categories


Columbia 18th Century Seminar
Daniel Margócsy
Assistant Professor of History
Hunter College

“A Natural History of Satyrs: Mythology and Science in the (Very) Long Eighteenth Century”
Thursday, February 19
The bar at Faculty House is scheduled to be open, so we will meet at 5:30pm for a cocktail with the buffet dinner to follow at 6:30.  The talk begins at 7:30.  If you are planning to attend, please rsvp to me, [email protected], so that I can get an accurate count for catering.  As usual, the cost of dinner is $25, payable by check only; if you are feeling especially thirsty, you can feel free to contribute an additional $5 toward the wine fund
Dr. Margócsy is an assistant professor in early modern history at Hunter College with an interest in the cultural history of science.  His research examines the impact of global trade in our period, focusing particularly on how commercial networks played a crucial role in the growth and transmission of empirical knowledge, and how commercial secrecy and marketing transformed the public sphere and the Republic of Letters.  His first book, Commercial Visions: Science, Trade and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age (University of Chicago Press) was published in 2014, and he has held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
He has forwarded on an abstract for his talk next week, which I reproduce in full here.  You can also find it on our Seminar website (link below), where you can find the schedule of talks for the rest of the semester.
“This talk examines how European natural historians made a connection between Ancient fables and exotic animals in the very long eighteenth century, focusing on the identification of the satyr with the orangutan. In recent years, historians have examined how early modern naturalists relied on humanist philology to identify the Greek plants of Dioscorides and Theophrastus with local plants in their environs. Yet the scholarship has ignored how naturalists also consulted myths and fables to make sense of exotic plants and animals. Well into the nineteenth century, natural historians assumed that, poetic license aside, these sources offered factual evidence about real species. An expertise in natural history included the interpretive skill to tease out the difference between fact and fiction in poetry. This talk examines how, from Nicolaas Tulp’s first description of the orangutan to Darwin’s contemporaries, European scholars justified their belief in the power of myth by making complex arguments about the age-old circulation of knowledge between the Far East and Europe.”