SFB 980:  Episteme in Motion - Transfer of Knowledge from the Ancient World to the Early Modern Period

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: from 2012 to 2024
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 191249397

The Collaborative Research Centre Episteme in Motion is dedicated to studying knowledge change in selected premodern cultures from Europe and beyond. The Centre investigates longue-durée processes of knowledge change in particular historical configurations and develops a methodology for their description. While there has been a wide-spread tendency to view premodern knowledge as primarily static – both within the premodern cultures themselves but also in the eyes of modern scholars – the Centre’s guiding hypothesis is that premodern knowledge was subject to constant change, especially in cases where there have been powerful claims to the contrary. For the purpose of understanding the specific dynamics of premodern knowledge change, the Centre has developed two closely-linked analytical terms: ‘episteme’ and ‘transfer’. ‘Episteme’ conceives of knowledge as a ‘knowledge of something’ that is always invested with some claim to validity – a claim which becomes manifest in particular discourses and practices and can never be understood without a consideration of its mediality and materiality. The term ‘transfer’, as understood by the Centre, denotes a form of knowledge change that consists in re-contextualisations that transform knowledge within new configurations and entanglements. Precisely because knowledge change is thus marked by constantly shifting reciprocal relations, its analysis makes it necessary to overcome traditional categories such as ‘period’ or ‘culture’. As a consequence of these observations, the Centre has developed the concept of ‘oikonomies of knowledge’ that encapsulates the multidirectional dynamism of premodern processes of knowledge change, as well as rendering analytically accessible the implicit norms, selection processes, invisible rules and power structures that shape the transformation of knowledge. During the Centre’s third funding period, a new concept, momentum, will play a key role for the Centre’s research programme. Momentum is designed to yield insight into the particular impulses within the multidirectionality that is central to knowledge change.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Current projects

• E06 - Sibyls & Prophets. Constellations of Figural Knowledge in Premodernity (Project Heads Eusterschulte, Anne ;  Schneider, Ulrike )
• E07 - Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: Reconfigurations of Vernacularity in the Early Modern Period (Project Head Simon, Horst )
• E08 - Erotema. The Question as an Epistemic Genre in the Learned Societies and the Periodical Press of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Project Head Traninger, Anita )

Completed projects

• A01 - Episteme as Configurative Process: Episteme between Theory and Practice in Cuneiform Law (Project Head Cancik-Kirschbaum, Eva )
• A02 - Ancient Egyptian Philology (Project Head Kahl, Jochem )
• A03 - The Transfer of Medical Episteme in the ‘Encyclopaedic’ Compilations of Late Antiquity (Project Head van der Eijk, Philip )
• A04 - Processes of Tradition Building in the Works of Aristotle (Project Head Uhlmann, Gyburg )
• A05 - From Logos to Kalam: Figurations and Transformations of Knowledge in Near Eastern Late Antiquity (Project Head Neuwirth, Angelika )
• A06 - Alchemia poetica. Chemical Knowledge and Poetry around 1600 (Project Head Wels, Volkhard )
• A07 - Erotema. The Question as an Epistemic Genre in the Learned Societies and the Periodical Press of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Project Head Traninger, Anita )
• A08 - Early Islamic sciences of the Qurʾān in light of late antique commentary cultures (Project Head Schmidt, Nora )
• B01 - Artefacts, Treasures and Ruins – Materiality and Historicity in the Literature of the English Middle Ages (Project Head Johnston, Andrew James )
• B02 - The Marvellous as a Configuration of Knowledge in Medieval Literature (Project Head Eming, Jutta )
• B03 - Imaginatio. Knowing about Imaginative Visions. Theories of Mental Imagery in Medieval Philosophy and Theology (Project Heads Eusterschulte, Anne ;  Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm )
• B04 - The Knowledge of Art. Aesthetics and Semantics of Figural Imagery in the Renaissance (Project Head Krüger, Klaus )
• B05 - Theory and Aesthetics of Elusive Knowledge in the Early Modern Period: Transfer and Institutionalisation (Project Head Schneider, Ulrike )
• B06 - Dimensions of Knowledge Oikonomies: Theory and Practice in Premodern Mining and Cosmology (Project Heads Eusterschulte, Anne ;  Renn, Ph.D., Jürgen )
• B07 - The Anecdote as a Form of Knowledge (Project Head Möller, Melanie )
• B08 - Sibyls & Prophets. Constellations of Figural Knowledge in Premodernity (Project Heads Eusterschulte, Anne ;  Schneider, Ulrike )
• C01 - Transfer of Apocryphal Knowledge through Translation in Ancient Christianity (and Judaism) (Project Head Markschies, Christoph )
• C02 - Asceticism in Motion: Forms and Transfer of Habitualized Knowledge in Antiquity and Late Antiquity (Project Head Renger, Almut-Barbara )
• C03 - Interaction and Change in Oriental Legal Systems. The Transfer of Normative Knowledge as Exemplified by Zoroastrian and Islamic Law (Seventh to Eleventh Centuries) (Project Head Macuch, Maria )
• C04 - Epistemic Dissonances. Objects and Tools of Early Modern Acoustics (Project Heads Schramm, Helmar ;  Tkaczyk, Viktoria )
• C06 - Transfer and Overlapping. Configurations of Knowledge in the Era of the Greek homines novi in the Ottoman Empire (1641 - 1730) (Project Head Pechlivanos, Miltos )
• C07 - Early Modernities in East Asia: Current Debates on the Origins of Modernity (Project Head Conrad, Sebastian )
• C08 - Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: Reconfigurations of Vernacularity in the Early Modern Period (Project Head Simon, Horst )
• C09 - Evaluations of Knowledge in Confucian Academies (Project Head Lee, Eun-Jeung )
• C10 - Verses and Sayings. Impetus and Range of Scholarly and Popularising Discourses in the Arabic World (Project Head Gründler, Beatrice )
• GP01 - Manuscripts in Motion: Tools for Documenting, Analysing and Visualising the Dynamics of Textual Topographies (Project Heads Rapp, Andrea ;  Stotzka, Rainer )
• INF - Corpora in Motion. Making Accessible Epistemic Transfer in Premodern Cultures Through Digital Means (Project Heads Geukes, Albert ;  Rapp, Andrea ;  Tonne, Danah ;  Uhlmann, Gyburg )
• T01 - Objects of Transfer - Between Epistemes and Aesthetics. Concepts for Communicating in a Museum Context Processes of Transfer between the Near East and Europe during the Premodern Period (Project Head Beyer, Vera )
• Z - Central Tasks (Project Heads Eusterschulte, Anne ;  Uhlmann, Gyburg )
• Ö - Showcasing Knowledge Transfer (Project Head Hasselmann, Kristiane )

• Applicant Institution: Freie Universität Berlin
• Participating University: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Karlsruher Institut für Technologie; Technische Universität Darmstadt
• Participating Institution: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (MPIWG); Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
• Spokespersons: Professorin Dr. Anne Eusterschulte, since 4/2023; Professorin Dr. Gyburg Uhlmann, until 3/2023