Abstract
Travels have without doubt been a perennial source of attraction not only to ordinary people but also to scholars in different fields, ranging from history, geography, anthropology, and literary studies to the history of science and technology. In the latter case travelling has played a prominent role in the context of colonialism and imperialism, but historians of science have seldom looked at travels within the European space, stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to the Balkans and the Scandinavian countries. This book will help to fill in this gap, by offering various case studies, which focus on travels of learning from some regions considered as peripheral to other regions recognised as centres of expertise. Before presenting the chapters in the volume, a general overview of the different types of travels and their respective backgrounds is provided, based on a review of the historical literature on travels, and the contributions to this volume.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
We have used the notion of civilisation in its original meaning, that is, as an expression of the European conscience, which perceived itself as unique, superior, and opposed to “barbarism.” It was in this sense that the term was first coined by Turgot and later used by Mirabeau in his Traité de la Population (1756). About the opposition between culture and civilisation see Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (London, 1939).
The expression “Grand Tour” was first used by Richard Lassels in An Italian Voyage, or Complete Journey through Italy (London, 1679).
We use the term “learned” (“lettré”) men in the sense in which Voltaire defined it in his entry “lettré” in the Encyclopédie,that is, a man who, despite not being an expert, has wide-ranging knowledge of various fields such as literature, art and the sciences.
Observing is here used in the sense of describing what is seen; reflecting in the sense of thinking in political, aesthetic and moral terms about what is observed. See C. Batten, Pleasurable Instruction ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978 ), p. 81.
As the eighteenth century moved on, the Grand Tour or the Giro became less and less a privilege of the wealthy that used to travel accompanied by servants. The spectrum of travellers widened to encompass middle-class people, including young single women, leading a comfortable life. See B. Dolan, Ladies of the Grand Tour (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), pp. 4–5 and Batten, op. cit. (4), p. 2.
The concept deliberately has a general meaning, since the form of cultural improvement sought by travelling people was also, with the exception of those attending schools or academies, very vague. J. Black, The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, n/d), p. 295.
The discovery of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, in 1738, the publication of the first treatises on objects of classical art (notably those by Johann Winckelmann, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der grieschischen Werke in der Malerei and Bildhauerkunst (Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture) (1755) and Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of Ancient Art) (1764), and by Anton Mengs, Untersuchung des Schonen in der Mahlerey (Inquiry into the Beauty of Painting) (1762), together with the dissemination of Roman architectural aesthetics (of which the engravings of Giovanni Piranesi are emblematic), stimulated the taste for the classical. Among the wealthy social elite and the learned, the taste for collecting classical items and for visiting their places of origin grew. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the interest in collecting extended to public institutions and museums such as the Prado, the Louvre and the British Museum. Napoleon’s campaign to Egypt (1798–99), which greatly enriched European museums, beyond its obvious military and territorial purposes, may also be included in this movement of re-discovery of pre-classical and classical antiquity and of collecting rare objects.
Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae (1735), by systematising the classification of known and unknown plants on the basis of their reproductive organs, led to a burst of interest in botanical collections. The herboriser with his bag and fieldwork notebook became a central character of travelling. See N. Jardine, J. A Secord, E. C. Spary, Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 145–162; M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 24–28.
B. Dolan, Exploring European Frontiers (London: MacMillan Press, 2000), pp.3–15; J. Black, op. cit. (6), pp.1–6; P. Adams, Travel Literature through the Ages (New York, Garland Publishing, 1988), pp. XV-XXV; C. Batten, op. cit. (4), pp. 1–18.
J. R. Harris, Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer: Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century ( London: Ashgate, 1998 ).
As an example of these travels to the European periphery, see M. P. Diogo, A. Carneiro, A. SimOes, “Sources for the History of Science in Portugal: One Possible Option,” Cronos,3 (1998), 115–224. Examples of these types of travels in other countries of the European periphery could be given.
The confrontation with the “other” entails the recognition of the “other,” but also the awareness of the “self’. See L. Wolf, Inventing Eastern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).
Some of A. von Humboldt’s letters illustrate this confrontation between awe and neutral observation. It was this dual reaction when facing the new that led Cuvier to find very suspicious the information obtained by “naturalistes-voyageurs.” See D. Livingstone, W. Withers, eds., Geography and Enlightenment ( Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999 ), pp. 1–32.
We use the concept of the sublime in its classical sense, as defined by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1758), and taken up by Kant, Diderot and the Romantics, that is, in the sense of a wonderful, stunning, inspiring event, able to uplift the soul. When applied to Nature it refers to a landscape whose overwhelming power is beyond human capacity to intervene, causing feelings of fear and fascination. Many described the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and the fury of its seismic waves, as sublime.
On this question see Pratt, op. cit. (8). We consider the notion of Eurocentrism, on which the analysis carried out by Marie Louise Pratt is centred, too simplistic. Taking Europe as a whole lacks historical accuracy: there is not one Europe, but many.
Pratt, op. cit. (8); Bruno Latour, Science in Action. How to follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); David P. Miller, H. P. Reill, eds., Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Roy McLeod, ed., Nature and Empire. Science and the Colonial Enterprise, OSIRIS, 15 (2000); Marie Noelle Bourguet, C. Licoppe, H. O. Sibum, eds., Science, Scientific Instruments and Travel ( London: Routledge, 2002 ).
We can give as an example of the interplay between specialisation and professionalisation, the scientific periodicals which appeared by the end of the eighteenth century.
We have in mind E. J. Hobsbawn, The Age of Revolution (1962), and its reference to the meaning of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution.
Saint-Simon draws on the Enlightenment notion of progress, and especially on Turgot’s Tableau Philosophique des progrès successifs de l’esprit humain (1750) and Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1793), introducing a key element—industry—as central to the march of humanity. See Saint-Simon, De la réorganisation de la société européenne (1814).
The contemporary notion of tourism emerges from the concept of the Grand Tour during the nineteenth century by assuming a strictly recreational dimension.
Livingstone, Withers, op. cit. (13); William Clark, Jan Golinski, Simon Schaffer, eds., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999 ); M. Blay, E. Nicolaidis, eds., L’Europe des Sciences: Constitution d’un Espace Scientifique ( Paris: Seuil, 2001 ).
A. Simóes, A. Carneiro, M. P. Diogo, “Constructing Knowledge: Eighteenth-Century Portugal and the New Sciences,” Archimedes,2 (1999), 1–40; A. Carneiro, A. Simóes, M. P. Diogo, “Enlightenment Science in Portugal,” Social Studies of Science,30 (2000), 591619.
F. Braudel, Grammaire des Civilisations ( Paris: Arthaud-Flammarion, 1987 ).
I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); G. Basalla, “The Spread of Western Science,” Science, 156 (1967), 611–622; X. Polanco, “Une science-monde: la mondialisation de la science et la création de traditions scientifiques locales” in X. Polanco, ed., Naissance et Dévelopement de la Science-Monde (Paris: Éditions de la Découverte/Unesco, 1990 ); F. Braudel, Civilisation Matérielle, Économie et Capitalisme, XVe-XVII! siècles ( Paris: Armand Colin, 1979 ).
Roy Porter, Mikulas Teich, eds., The Scientific Revolution in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Kostas Gavroglu, ed., The Sciences in the European Periphery during the Enlightenment (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999); C.A. Lértora-Mendoza, E. Nicolaidis, J. Vandersmissen, eds., The Spread of the Scientific Revolution to the European Periphery, Latin America and East Asia,Proceedings of the XXth International Congress of History of Science (Belgium: Brepols, 2000); A.G. Kenwood, A.L. Lougheed, Technological Diffusion and Industrialisation before 1914 (London: Groom Helm, 1982); N. Rosenberg, “Factors affecting the Diffusion of Technology” in N. Rosenberg, ed., Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); P. Kelly, M. Kranzberg, eds., Technological Innovation: a Critical review of Current Knowledge (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1978).
Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth. Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994); Latour, op.cit. (16).
Margaret Stacey, Tradition and Change. A Study of Banbury (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960); Derek de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963); Diane Crane, “Social Structure in a Group of Scientists: A Test of the Invisible College Hypothesis,” American Sociological Review, 34 (1969), 335–352; Belver Griffith, Nicholas Mullins, “Coherent Social Groups in Scientific Change,” Science, 177 (1972), 959–64; David Edge, Michael Mulkay, Astronomy Transformed: the Emergence of Radio Astronomy in Britain (New York: John Wiley amp; Sons, 1976); Harry Collins, “The Place of ‘Core-Set’ in Modern Science: Social Contingency with Methodological Propriety in Science,” History of Science, 19 (1981), 6–19; Michel Callon, John Law, Arie Rip, eds., Mapping the Dynamic of Science and Technology ( London: Macmillan, 1986 ).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Simões, A., Carneiro, A., Diogo, M.P. (2003). Travels of Learning. In: Simões, A., Carneiro, A., Diogo, M.P. (eds) Travels of Learning. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 233. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3584-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3584-1_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-6281-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3584-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive