The book "World of Patterns: A Global History of Knowledge" (JHU Press) has been made freely available in open access form via Project Muse!
Click here to go to the Table of Contents with free links to all chapters.
This weblog is dedicated to the unified history of humanities and sciences, in particular to the books "Een Wereld Vol Patronen" (World of Patterns, 2019/2022) and "De Vergeten Wetenschappen" (A New History of the Humanities, 2010/2013) by Rens Bod
The book "World of Patterns: A Global History of Knowledge" (JHU Press) has been made freely available in open access form via Project Muse!
Click here to go to the Table of Contents with free links to all chapters.
The 10th conference on the history of the humanities, The Making of the Humanities X, will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 3-5, 2022. We are delighted that Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) together with the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) will organize the conference.
The deadline for papers and panels is May 15, 2022.
I just learned that my book World of Patterns will be translated into Chinese (The Beijing Science and Technology Publishing Company), Polish (PWN) and Turkish (Monografi). The contracts have just been signed. And there will be more translations to come.
The official publication data of World of Patterns will be May 10, so stay tuned!
An interesting review appeared in "Scienza e Fede" by Giulia Andronico of the Italian version of "A New History of the Humanities". According to the reviewer:
"La storia globale delle scienze umanistiche è per la prima volta raccolta e raccontata da Rens Bod nel suo bel volume ricco di spiegazioni e spunti interessanti, che già nel titolo “Le scienze dimenticate. Come le discipline umanistiche hanno cambiato il mondo” stimola la curiosità di chi si appresta alla sua lettura."
Or in English:
"The global history of the humanities is for the first time collected and told by Rens Bod in his beautiful volume full of explanations and interesting insights, which already in its title "The Forgotten Sciences. How the humanities changed the world" stimulates the curiosity of those who are about to read it."
Almost 10 years after its publication, A New History of the Humanities continues to be reviewed, this time in the Spanish-language Chilean magazine Santiago. The reviewer raises some important questions:
"Is there such a thing as a lowest common denominator between art theory, literary criticism and music? And if it were true, what good would it do us?"
Indeed, that's what the review tries to answer on the basis of my book. Google translate or DeepL do a great job in translating it into English! Click here for the full open access review.
The English translation of my Dutch book "Een wereld vol patronen" is now in press and will appear in a couple of months with Johns Hopkins University Press.
From the blurb:
The idea that the world can be understood through patterns and the principles that govern them is one of the most important human insights—it may also be our greatest survival strategy. Our search for patterns and principles began 40,000 years ago, when striped patterns were engraved on mammoths' bones to keep track of the moon's phases. What routes did human knowledge take to grow from these humble beginnings through many detours and dead ends into modern understandings of nature and culture? In this work of unprecedented scope, Rens Bod removes the Western natural sciences from their often-central role to bring us the first global history of human knowledge.
Having sketched the history of the humanities in his ground-breaking A New History of the Humanities, Bod now adopts a broader perspective, stepping beyond classical antiquity back to the Stone Age to answer the question: Where did our knowledge of the world today begin and how did it develop? Drawing on developments from all five continents of the inhabited world, World of Patterns offers startling connections. Focusing on a dozen fields—ranging from astronomy, philology, medicine, law, and mathematics to history, botany, and musicology—Bod examines to what degree their progressions can be considered interwoven and to what degree we can speak of global trends.
In this pioneering work, Bod aims to fulfill what he sees as the historian's responsibility: to grant access to history's goldmine of ideas. Bod discusses how inoculation was invented in China rather than Europe; how many of the fundamental aspects of modern mathematics and astronomy were first discovered by the Indian Kerala school; and how the study of law provided fundamental models for astronomy and linguistics from Roman to Ottoman times. The book flies across continents and eras. The result is an enlightening symphony, a stirring chorus of human inquisitiveness extending through the ages.
For more info and for the first (requested) reviews, see the book's home page at JHU Press.
It contains 16 articles divided as follows:
A Special Theme section “DECENTRALIZING THE HISTORY OF THE HUMANITIES”
A Forum section “THE CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE HISTORY OF THE HUMANITIES”.
In addition, the issue contains 18 book reviews.
For a full overview of contents and access, click here.
The preliminary program of "The Making of the Humanities IX" conference in Barcelona (20-22 September 2021) is now available online and can be found here.
Please note that due to the circumstances surrounding COVID19, the entirety of the 2021 conference will be digital.
If you would like to join for what promises to be an excellent set of presentations, you can find instructions for registering here.
Two quotes from respectively the Theme and the Forum sections:
“Our findings support authors who have recently questioned the supposed divide between the humanities and sciences.”
“The humanities are still in urgent need of being decolonized and deprovincialized.”
The Korean translation of "De vergeten wetenschappen" (or "A New History of the Humanities") has just been published by Torusbooks. Many thanks to its translator Kang-Ok Lee who pointed me among other things to the Great Dharani Sutra, the oldest printed text known.
Every new translation is getting thicker with extra pages on the local history of the humanities. So its English title "A New History of..." continues to be valid.
"Het pièce de résistance, als je zoiets al kunt aanwijzen in dit buitengewoon rijke en erudiete boek, is echter een cluster van casussen waarmee Bod aantoont dat de empirische cyclus, die vaak wordt gezien als uitvinding van een ‘wetenschappelijke revolutie’ in de natuurwetenschappen, al werd toegepast door humanistische filologen, muziekwetenschappers en taalkundigen in Europa aan het begin van de zestiende eeuw."
"Bods benadering is nadrukkelijk polycentrisch en vergelijkend. Het is zijn doel om ‘zo veel mogelijk disciplines uit zo veel mogelijk regio’s en culturen op gelijke voet te behandelen’ en met name Europa en de westerse natuurwetenschappen uit hun centrale positie te halen."
Mijn boek Een Wereld Vol Patronen is gerecenseerd door Klaas van Berkel in het "Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis":
"De Amsterdamse hoogleraar Digital Humanities Rens Bod heeft na zijn grandioze boek De vergeten wetenschappen: Een geschiedenis van de humaniora (2010) met zijn nieuwste boek Een wereld vol patronen: De geschiedenis van kennis wederom een meesterwerk afgeleverd. In dit boek probeert hij niets minder dan een geïntegreerde geschiedenis van de groei van de kennis over de volle breedte te vertellen. Dat wil zeggen: van de vroegste prehistorie tot ongeveer 1800, met inbegrip van de precolumbiaanse, de Chinese, de Indiase, de Polynesische en de islamculturen, en niet beperkt tot de natuur- of de geesteswetenschappen, maar beide domeinen omvattend. [...]
Er is veel te bewonderen in dit boek. Men staat verbaasd hoeveel literatuur Rens Bod in de loop van een paar jaar tot zich genomen heeft en hoe trefzeker hij de belangrijkste lessen daaruit op de juiste plaats heeft weten te zetten. Het is al een schier onmogelijke opgave om de literatuur over de geschiedenis van kennis en wetenschap in de westerse cultuur bij te houden, maar de schrijver laat ook merken ook in de literatuur over andere dan westerse culturen zijn weg te kunnen vinden."
The Making of the Humanities’ conference goes to Barcelona! The Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) together with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) will host the 9th Making of the Humanities conference, from 20 till 22 September 2021, at the facilities of the UPF Faculty of Humanities, Ciutadella Campus, Jaume I building.
This year’s conference theme is Unfolding Disciplines in the History of the Humanities.
Deadline for papers and panels: 1 May 2021.
Het tijdschrift Medisch Contact schreef op 25 september 2020 een korte recensie van zowel mijn onlangs verschenen boek "40 Stellingen over de Wetenschap" (geschreven samen met Remco Breuker en Ingrid Robeyns) als het boek "Een Wereld Vol Patronen".
"Pikant daarbij is dat de auteurs ook het onderscheid tussen de geesteswetenschappen, natuurwetenschappen en sociale wetenschappen niet langer willen handhaven. Ongetwijfeld mede ingegeven door de monumentale studie Een wereld vol patronen van Rens Bod, waarin hij laat zien hoezeer die verschillende kennistradities – allemaal op zoek naar convergerende patronen en principes immers – elkaar al eeuwenlang beïnvloeden. Dat biedt ook een nieuwe kijk op de geschiedenis van de geneeskunde"