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dc.contributor.authorYeo, Richard
dc.date.accessioned2020-10-22T23:30:54Z
dc.date.available2020-10-22T23:30:54Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.identifier.issn0034-4338
dc.identifier.doi10.1086/691870
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10072/398458
dc.description.abstractIn this intriguing and impressive book, Vera Keller presents a history of the desiderata that appeared in early modern Europe. These wish lists responded to public interest by pursuing projects likely to advance the common good. Among the favorite desired things, recurring across two centuries, were perpetual lamps, flexible glass, diving bells, the philosopher’s stone, the Alkahest (or universal solvent), and perpetual motion. During the same period, some of these were cited as impossibilities by other list makers, thereby contrasting the promises of charlatans with more considered inventories of things objectively needed by society or lacking in a branch of knowledge. At the start of the 1600s, desiderata mainly comprised lost inventions and natural processes: for example, Guido Pancirolli’s Two Books of Things Lost and Things Found (1599–1602) encouraged the idea that lost ancient knowledge could be restored by the moderns (see his sixty-five lost things on 48–49). Later, desiderata set out the direction of future, increasingly specialized, research that would discover new knowledge.
dc.description.peerreviewedYes
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherCambridge University Press
dc.relation.ispartofpagefrom289
dc.relation.ispartofpageto290
dc.relation.ispartofissue1
dc.relation.ispartofjournalRenaissance Quarterly
dc.relation.ispartofvolume70
dc.subject.fieldofresearchArt history, theory and criticism
dc.subject.fieldofresearchLiterary studies
dc.subject.fieldofresearchHistorical studies
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode3601
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode4705
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode4303
dc.subject.keywordsArts & Humanities
dc.subject.keywordsMedieval & Renaissance Studies
dc.subject.keywordsArts & Humanities - Other Topics
dc.titleKnowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725. Vera Keller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. x + 350 pp. $99.99. (Book Review)
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.descriptionC2 - Articles (Other)
dcterms.bibliographicCitationYeo, R, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725. Vera Keller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. x + 350 pp. $99.99. (Book Review), Renaissance Quarterly, 2017, 70 (1), pp. 289-290
dc.date.updated2020-10-19T01:59:14Z
dc.description.versionAccepted Manuscript (AM)
gro.rights.copyright© 2017 Cambridge University Press. This is the author-manuscript version of this paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
gro.hasfulltextFull Text
gro.griffith.authorYeo, Richard R.


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