Curating the Enlightenment

Vera Keller is Professor of History at the University of Oregon. She holds particular interests in the emergence of experimental science and the connections between scientific research and capitalism, colonialism, and political economy. Keller is the author of Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725 (2015) and The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge (2023).

• Part I. Introduction: 1. The dream of the butterfly; 2. Major's life and setting; Part II. Approaches to Knowledge: 3. The making of a research scholar; 4. The history of learning and research infrastructures; Part III. Reworking Disciplines: 5. Anthropology; 6. Lithology; 7. Archaeology; Part IV. Spaces of Knowledge: 8. Experimental philosophy; 9. Museology; Part V. Conclusion: 10. The light of nature and the uses of knowledge; Bibliography; Index.

'Keller is a masterful guide through the thickets of late 17th-century German academic culture and its colorful characters, collections, and publications. She traces the origins of research to this lost world, where curiosity and freedom from external interference allowed a shifting set of disciplines to form and in ways that proved seminal to the Enlightenment.' Ann Blair, Harvard University