tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19833734.post2750971707812143899..comments2024-02-22T19:21:40.330-05:00Comments on Muhlberger's World History: The great conversation, or, the Republic of LettersUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19833734.post-66736978292989868712007-08-22T08:22:00.000-04:002007-08-22T08:22:00.000-04:00A well-known full professor of medieval history sa...A well-known full professor of medieval history said to me that at his current stage of life (50s and successful) he now dares to book tickets and travel accommodations that are one step above rock bottom.<BR/><BR/>The academic life! So respectable!Steve Muhlbergerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18136005762428407135noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19833734.post-73744924553340738952007-08-22T08:20:00.000-04:002007-08-22T08:20:00.000-04:00Thanks for the meaty comment.I think that there ar...Thanks for the meaty comment.<BR/><BR/>I think that there are many such undetected net phenomena in intellectual history. I read about 10 years ago a book by Bernard Baylin (?) in which he cited transatlantic communication just before the American Revolution. A female historian from Britain named Walpole, quite well read in her time, decided she wanted to go to Boston and see what was really going on. This was made all the more practical because she had an established correspondence with most of the prominent Mass. troublemakers! And don't forget those Committees of Correspondence, or Franklin's scientific correspondence, or Paine or Wollstonecraft, etc., etc.!<BR/><BR/>At the same time, there are clearly periods when reactionary power holders completely coopt or shut down what had been free, innovative, constructive discussion.<BR/><BR/>The fact that serious political thinking seldom gets on American TV except in "comedy" form shows that we or rather you are in one of the latter periods; but of course with the Internet it's difficult to shut everything down, and that may indicate you are coming out of it.<BR/><BR/>Two final points: no technology will solve the problem of stifled discussion by itself. And the huge explosion of political blogs indicates that many millions are starved for substantial discussion in their immediate surroundings.Steve Muhlbergerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18136005762428407135noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19833734.post-60456902627994466252007-08-21T17:43:00.000-04:002007-08-21T17:43:00.000-04:00This "republic of letters" conversation marches in...This "republic of letters" conversation marches in absolute parallel with an experience I had this summer on, of all things, a media trip to Germany. <BR/><BR/>We flew coach (a concession to "economy" by the auto company sponsoring the trip, not necessarily for cash savings but as a demonstration that they were aware of tough times in the U.S. environment and couldn't send a bunch of journalists off business-class to enjoy the fruits of Dusseldorf without risking their reputation as a caring domestic employer)and the fortunate thing for me is that coach is where visiting professors of Ancient French also tend to fly when on their way home from sabbaticals. <BR/><BR/>My seat mate had been doing research on primary source letters between intellectuals of the 16th/17th century -- wads of these letters having apparently been amassed in a private collection donated to (I *think*) an immense climate-controlled library at the University of Kansas or some equally improbable mid-American retail-funded spielplatz. What he had discovered were unexpected networks of intelligent people "talking" to one another in strictly-formed correspondence. Each letter would have three main parts -- a formula greeting in which the health and wellbeing of everybody and their family were asked after, a meaty midsection, and a formula closing including requests that information or enclosures be passed on to certain individuals.<BR/><BR/>It was the unexpected networks tied into the information in the letters that delighted my airline companion -- the revelation of who knew whom, of who knew where communities of thinkers and experimenters might be, and of how the information contained in the letter might agree with or confound somebody else's opinion from a scholarly or enlightened community. Essentially, these few hundred people knew each others' ideas intimately enough that an ongoing episodic conversation was happening, about ideas, internationally despite wars and all the other horsemen of the apocalypse. So there would be references in one letter to "please forward this information to so-and-so," with an annotation saying so-and-so might be dead as he hadn't been heard from for quite some time, but then in a later letter someone would mention that rumors of so-and-so's death were due to illness, travel, a diplomatic mission that took him out of circulation, etc. <BR/><BR/>At any rate, here was this ongoing Euro conversation about ideas -- a sort of slow Internet of its time -- running as add-ons to ordinary letters that were churning their horse-drawn, ship-driven or turnshoe-net way from place to place. And by correlating who was sending and who (putatively) was receiving such letters, a different kind of web of relationships than the "big man" theory of intellectual history can be shown to have covered the various dominant cities and trade routes. Sometimes quite insignificant people (compared to those we have come to lionize)tucked quite surprising turning points into the information debate, as well, he said.<BR/><BR/>Of course, around came the airline meals cart long before our conversation should have been over, all reasonable discussion died at the hands of flight attendants sternly urging the passengers to remain buckled and not to move about the cabin, and we were confined to eating flightless birds in a flying machine high over the North Atlantic. <BR/><BR/>Still, it was a highly interesting glimpse of an unsuspected (by me) and sophisticated structure of past knowledge. Gone the image of brilliant individuals toiling in lonely intellectual seclusion to startle the world with their incontravertible Eureka idea. Enter the idea of brilliant individuals networking mightily.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com