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
Completed projects
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A01 - Episteme as Configurative Process: Episteme between Theory and Practice in Cuneiform Law
(Project Head
Cancik-Kirschbaum, Eva
)
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A02 - Ancient Egyptian Philology
(Project Head
Kahl, Jochem
)
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A03 - The Transfer of Medical Episteme in the ‘Encyclopaedic’ Compilations of Late Antiquity
(Project Head
van der Eijk, Philip
)
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A04 - Processes of Tradition Building in the Works of Aristotle
(Project Head
Uhlmann, Gyburg
)
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A05 - From Logos to Kalam: Figurations and Transformations of Knowledge in Near Eastern Late Antiquity
(Project Head
Neuwirth, Angelika
)
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A06 - Alchemia poetica. Chemical Knowledge and Poetry around 1600
(Project Head
Wels, Volkhard
)
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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
)
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A08 - Early Islamic sciences of the Qurʾān in light of late antique commentary cultures
(Project Head
Schmidt, Nora
)
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B01 - Artefacts, Treasures and Ruins – Materiality and Historicity in the Literature of the English Middle Ages
(Project Head
Johnston, Andrew James
)
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B02 - The Marvellous as a Configuration of Knowledge in Medieval Literature
(Project Head
Eming, Jutta
)
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B03 - Imaginatio. Knowing about Imaginative Visions. Theories of Mental Imagery in Medieval Philosophy and Theology
(Project Heads
Eusterschulte, Anne
;
Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm
)
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B04 - The Knowledge of Art. Aesthetics and Semantics of Figural Imagery in the Renaissance
(Project Head
Krüger, Klaus
)
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B05 - Theory and Aesthetics of Elusive Knowledge in the Early Modern Period: Transfer and Institutionalisation
(Project Head
Schneider, Ulrike
)
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B06 - Dimensions of Knowledge Oikonomies: Theory and Practice in Premodern Mining and Cosmology
(Project Heads
Eusterschulte, Anne
;
Renn, Ph.D., Jürgen
)
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B07 - The Anecdote as a Form of Knowledge
(Project Head
Möller, Melanie
)
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B08 - Sibyls & Prophets. Constellations of Figural Knowledge in Premodernity
(Project Heads
Eusterschulte, Anne
;
Schneider, Ulrike
)
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C01 - Transfer of Apocryphal Knowledge through Translation in Ancient Christianity (and Judaism)
(Project Head
Markschies, Christoph
)
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C02 - Asceticism in Motion: Forms and Transfer of Habitualized Knowledge in Antiquity and Late Antiquity
(Project Head
Renger, Almut-Barbara
)
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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
)
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C04 - Epistemic Dissonances. Objects and Tools of Early Modern Acoustics
(Project Heads
Schramm, Helmar
;
Tkaczyk, Viktoria
)
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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
)
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C07 - Early Modernities in East Asia: Current Debates on the Origins of Modernity
(Project Head
Conrad, Sebastian
)
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C08 - Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: Reconfigurations of Vernacularity in the Early Modern Period
(Project Head
Simon, Horst
)
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C09 - Evaluations of Knowledge in Confucian Academies
(Project Head
Lee, Eun-Jeung
)
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C10 - Verses and Sayings. Impetus and Range of Scholarly and Popularising Discourses in the Arabic World
(Project Head
Gründler, Beatrice
)
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E06 - Sibyls & Prophets. Constellations of Figural Knowledge in Premodernity
(Project Heads
Eusterschulte, Anne
;
Schneider, Ulrike
)
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E07 - Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: Reconfigurations of Vernacularity in the Early Modern Period
(Project Head
Simon, Horst
)
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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
)
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GP01 - Manuscripts in Motion: Tools for Documenting, Analysing and Visualising the Dynamics of Textual Topographies
(Project Heads
Rapp, Andrea
;
Stotzka, Rainer
)
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INF - Corpora in Motion. Making Accessible Epistemic Transfer in Premodern Cultures Through Digital Means
(Project Heads
Geukes, Albert
;
Rapp, Andrea
;
Tonne, Danah
;
Uhlmann, Gyburg
)
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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
)
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Z - Central Tasks
(Project Heads
Eusterschulte, Anne
;
Uhlmann, Gyburg
)
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Ö - Showcasing Knowledge Transfer
(Project Head
Hasselmann, Kristiane
)
