How is knowledge or experience of nature mediated by gesture, bodily or otherwise? In this workshop, three short, informal papers, and an overarching interdisciplinary conversation between speakers and participants, will explore the roles of gesture (understood as encompassing a range of writerly, bodily, and otherwise social forms of communication) in shaping and communicating various forms of knowledge in the early modern period and beyond.

Speakers:

Viktoria von Hoffmann, (F.R.S.-FNRS) / University of Liège) ‘The Expert Touch: Feeling Substances in Holy Anatomies’

Yelda Nasifoglu (Oxford) ‘Inscribing motion on paper: Robert Hooke’s drawing of the conical pendulum’

Michael Drolet (Oxford) ‘Touching is Compulsory: Labour and Collective Experience in Saint-Simonism’

Convenors : Jenny Oliver (Oxford), Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS/MFO).

A meeting of the interdisciplinary early modern working group Writing Technology/The Technology of Writing writingearly.hypotheses.org/about