Project Details
Projekt Print View

FOR 606:  Processes of the Reorganisation of Knowledge Traditions between the 13th and 17th Centuries

Subject Area Humanities
Term from 2005 to 2011
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 13369539
 
The Research Unit began its work in September 2005. It undertakes the analysis of the patterns that feature in the process of transmission and transmutation of knowledge. Six projects selected from the fields of history, art history, philosophy, sinology and comparative literature have been chosen as research paradigms. To ensure the compatibility of results, the field of research is centred on the period between the 13th and 17th centuries.
The main presupposition of the undertaking is that especially in this period scientific, juridical, iconical and cultural topics come into a speeding process of transfer, tradition and change of knowledge. This process can be understood as the breaking-up, fragmenting and rearranging of new knowledge. With its studies our Research Unit expects to establish a model of cultural change which is valid also for other cultural processes and can be used for research in neighbouring fields. It should be applicable especially to comparative cultural studies.
As a result, we try to overcome more vague and undifferentiated concepts of influence, of intertextual or social interdependence which are, moreover, notoriously difficult to interrelate. The specific advantage of the present Research Unit s method consists in the achievement delivered by the concept of topoi. Topoi can describe many varying cultural phenomena which can be isolated and can be transferred to other fields of cultural, scientific and political activities. Each of those topoi should be analysed with disciplinary skills in order to make them transparent to neighbouring fields. When topoi are transferred to new contexts they change their original meanings. This can be reconstructed as the tool of the new arrangement into which the knowledge overcome has been woven.
DFG Programme Research Units

Projects

 
 

Additional Information

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung