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Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
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Introduction32 to the highest degree in the other. Both cases highlight the transformation of traditional humanist concerns into a natural philosophical context via a study of the type of persona as shaped by the protagonists in their work.104 It must be added that according to the author of these accounts, the studying of this type is not, strictly speaking, biography, but closer to biography than the history of philosophical or scientific discovery and doctrine.105 It is helpful to invoke here another “non-biography” of a crucial figure of the early modern Republic of Letters: the great seventeenth-century facilitator of communication and col- lection in the world of learning, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637).106 Peiresc’s life—corresponding to a period of relative calm in Europe, marked by openness to learning and a confidence in the ability of reason to solve problems—is used as a means of “summoning” this lost world via the answers it gave to questions like “what is a scholar and why be a scholar?”107 The an- swers were based on the combination of values from skepticism, stoicism, and sociability: precision of observation and suspension of judgment; humility, tranquility of mind, and constancy of endeavor; conversation and friendship. Peiresc’s persona was widely regarded as embodying these values and virtues associated with scholarship, and the answer to the “why” question was nothing less than the indispensability of these as bonds of human society. In the recent thrust of contextualized science biography, two deserve spe- cial mention here as dedicated to characters with whose careers that of Maxi- milian Hell intersected in different ways. One of these is the biography of the French mathematician, physicist, and philosophe Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759), endeavoring to illuminate the place of science in the cosmopolitan Republic of Letters, and the role of science in making the pro- tagonist’s persona.108 Below, the uses to which Maupertuis turned the experi- ence of his memorable Lapland journey of 1736 will briefly be compared with those of Hell with regard to the 1768–69 Venus transit expedition. In another recent revisionist study, the “self-invention” of a figure working in the same 104 Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early Modern Philosophy (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 105 Stephen Gaukroger, “Biography as a Route to Understanding Early Modern Natural Phi- losophy,” in Söderqvist, History and Poetics, 37–50, here 47. 106 Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Ha- ven: Yale University Press, 2000). Cf. Miller, Peiresc’s Mediterranean World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 107 Miller, Peiresc’s Europe, 4, 14. 108 Mary Terrall, The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlight- enment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
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Maximilian Hell (1720–92) And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
Titel
Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
Untertitel
And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
Autoren
Per Pippin Aspaas
László Kontler
Verlag
Brill
Ort
Leiden
Datum
2020
Sprache
englisch
Lizenz
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
ISBN
978-90-04-41683-3
Abmessungen
15.5 x 24.1 cm
Seiten
492
Kategorien
Naturwissenschaften Physik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

  1. Acknowledgments VII
  2. List of Illustrations IX
  3. Bibliographic Abbreviations X
  4. Introduction 1
    1. 1 Enlightenment(s) 7
    2. 2 Catholic Enlightenment—Enlightenment Catholicism 11
    3. 3 The Society of Jesus and Jesuit Science 17
    4. 4 What’s in a Life? 26
  5. 1 Shafts and Stars, Crafts and Sciences: The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces 37
    1. 1 A Regional Life World 37
    2. 2 Turbulent Times and an Immigrant Family around the Mines 44
    3. 3 Apprenticeship 53
    4. 4 Professor on the Frontier 76
  6. 2 Metropolitan Lures: Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science 91
    1. 1 An Agenda for Astronomic Advance 91
    2. 2 Science in the City and in the World: Hell and the respublica astronomica 106
  7. 3 A New Node of Science in Action: The 1761 Transit of Venus and Hell’s Transition to Fame 134
    1. 1 A Golden Opportunity 134
    2. 2 An Imperial Astronomer’s Network Displayed 144
    3. 3 Lessons Learned 155
    4. 4 “Quonam autem fructu?” Taking Stock 166
  8. 4 The North Beckons: “A desperate voyage by desperate persons” 172
    1. 1 Scandinavian Self-Assertions 174
    2. 2 The Invitation from Copenhagen: Providence and Rhetoric 185
    3. 3 From Vienna to Vardø 195
  9. 5 He Came, He Saw, He Conquered? The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum 209
    1. 1 A Journey Finished and Yet Unfinished 210
    2. 2 Enigmas of the Northern Sky and Earth 220
    3. 3 On Hungarians and Laplanders 230
    4. 4 Authority Crumbling 256
  10. 6 “Tahiti and Vardø will be the two columns […]”: Observing Venus andDebating the Parallax 258
    1. 1 Mission Accomplished 260
    2. 2 Accomplishment Contested 269
    3. 3 A Peculiar Nachleben 298
  11. 7 Disruption of Old Structures 305
    1. 1 Habsburg Centralization and the De-centering of Hell 306
    2. 2 Critical Publics: Vienna, Hungary 315
    3. 3 Ex-Jesuit Astronomy: Institutions and Trajectories 330
  12. 8 Coping with Enlightenments 344
    1. 1 Viennese Struggles 344
    2. 2 Redefining the Center 366
    3. Conclusion: Borders and Crossings 388
  13. Appendix 1 Map of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus (with Glossary of Geographic Names) 394
  14. Appendix 2 Instruction for the Imperial and Royal Astronomer Maximilian Hell, S.J 398
  15. Bibliography 400
  16. Index 459
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