Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Billy Kemper -- Week 3 -- Primary Sources
From our discussions last week and Professor Kollman’s advice, I’ve been trying to narrow my paper to the development of the conception of race through the medium of the Royal Society of London. I skimmed through a few more Royal Society articles written around the time of the ones I reported on last week (c. early 18th century), but then went back and found some sources on the Society’s actual founding and early history. In the vein of this week’s readings, I think such background research is necessary, as the culture and lens through which historians see the world is essential for truly understanding their writings. I think at this point I’ll start looking at a more encompassing view of the conception of race through the Royal Society’s contemporaries, to serve as a basis of comparison to the Society’s developments and changes in thought. I hope this doesn’t drag me into the original fear of having to broad a subject, but I think such a basis of comparison will be necessary to better analyze the uniqueness of the Royal Society and its views. I hope I wasn’t too all over the place in this post; hopefully discussion tomorrow will help clarify my ideas to everyone (myself included).
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When you say the Royal Society's contemporaries, do you mean other scientific organizations of the time? Or are you looking at the evolution of thought within the Royal Society? If it's the former, I'm not sure how much background information you need to incorporate into your paper. Of course, if it's the latter, the more background the better!
ReplyDeleteThe royal society was part of an early push towards rationalization, scientific thought that occurred in the late 17th century under Charles II. I think if you are going to talk about the creation of royal society, and its opinions then background research is essential. Furthermore, I think if you are going to look at the evolution of thought within the royal society some background research is also essential. I think when writing about their opinions it will be important to contextualize them within what is going on in London at the time. The royal society is a very interesting topic though and I think it would be a great research paper. It really was part of a huge transformation in English society.
ReplyDelete~Mackenzie
Hi Billy, I like your topic and I think it's great that one of us is thinking about how encounters created reactionary (pseudo)-scientific movements to establish supposed differences and superiority and re-stabilize the Europeans' changing world. We tend to think of traveling as having positive effects on us - getting us to question our dogmas, opening us up to new possibilities. Your topic makes me wonder why reactions were sometimes so different? What was it about these encounters that caused people to erect walls that impeded understanding through constructing these race-based categories and trying to give them scientific force?
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ReplyDeleteSince you haven't figured out yet what the scope of your paper exactly is, so more research on potential comparison sources will help with that. As for your potential topic - "a more encompassing view of the conception of race through the Royal Society’s contemporaries, to serve as a basis of comparison to the Society’s developments and changes in thought" - it definitely seems very broad. What about doing a close analysis of the Society's thoughts on the subject, and drawing in only a few other sources and especially secondary sources as support for a thesis on whether the Society reflected the general contemporary thought on race? (ps only removed the post so I could add a ? at the end)
ReplyDeleteI think the research you'll have to do on race might be a bit too daunting. I'd focus on what the Society had to say and leave it at that. Maybe you can find a secondary source to talk about contemporary views instead of getting a ton of individual primary sources.
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