Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, edited by Peter N. Miller and François Louis
Peter N. Miller and François Louis, editors
This book is a comparative history that juxtaposes early modern European and Chinese approaches to historical study that have been called “antiquarian.” As an exercise in historical recovery, this volume amasses new information about the range of antiquarian-type scholarship on the past, on nature, and on peoples undertaken at either end of the Eurasian landmass between 1500 and 1800. As a historiographical project, the book challenges the received—and often very under-conceptualized—use of the term “antiquarian” in both European and Chinese contexts.
Table of Contents
Antiquarianism and Study of the Past
1. Writing Antiquarianism: Prolegomenon to a History
Peter N. Miller
2. The Many Dimensions of the Antiquary’s Practice
Alain Schnapp
3. Far and Away? Japan, China, and Egypt, and the Ruins of Ancient Rome in Justus Lipsius’s Intellectual Journey
Jan Papy
4. Comparing Antiquarianisms: A View from Europe
Peter N. Miller
Part II
Authenticity and Antiquities
5. The Credulity Problem
Christopher S. Wood
6. Artifacts of Authentication: People Making Texts Making Things in Ming-Qing China
Bruce Rusk
Part III
The Discovery of the World
7. Styles of Medical Antiquarianism
Nancy G. Siraisi
8. Therapy and Antiquity in Late Imperial China
Nathan Sivin
9. Wang Shizhen and Li Shizhen: Archaism and Early Scientific Thought in Sixteenth-Century China
Kenneth J. Hammond
10. The Botany of Cheng Yaotian (1725–1814): Multiple Perspectives on Plants
Georges Metailié
Part IV
Antiquarianism and Ethnography
11. The Study of Islam in Early Modern Europe: Obstacles and Missed Opportunities
Noel Malcolm
12. Thinking About “Non-Chinese” in Ming China
Leo K. Shin
Part V
Antiquarianism and a “History of Religion”
13. From Antiquarianism to Philosophical History: India, China, and the World History of Religion in European Thought (1600–1770)
Joan-Pau Rubiés
14. Whose Antiquarianism? Europe Versus China in the 1701 Conflict Between Bishop Maigrot and Qiu Sheng
D. E. Mungello
15. From Antiquarian Imagination to the Reconstruction of Institutions: Antonius van Dale
Martin Mulsow
Reviews
"This volume is the first to juxtapose the autochthonous traditions of antiquarianism of Early Modern Europe and Late Imperial China. Rather than asking only what the West might be able to learn about China, it self-consciously and quite successfully seeks to open up new perspectives on both sides of the comparison. It moreover breaks important ground in suggesting historically traceable links between evidential learning in China and European traditions of 'Herodotean' historiography."
—Lothar von Falkenhausen, University of California, Los Angeles
"This splendid collection of essays is at once a major addition to the literature on the history of scholarship in Western Europe, a burgeoning field in its own right, and a model effort at comparative cultural history . . . The collection as a whole sheds light on areas little known even to erudite scholars."
—Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
About the Editors
Peter N. Miller is Dean and Professor at the Bard Graduate Center.
François Louis is Associate Professor at the Bard Graduate Center.
Other Details
ISBN
9780472118182
Dimensions
6 x 9 x 1 3/8 in.
Page count
440 pp. 23 B&W illustrations
Binding
Cloth
