Visions of Time in Early Modern Europe

• Event Date: Tuesday, March 6, 2007
• Time: 4:00 pm (CST)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

Center for Advanced Study
CAS/MillerComm Lecture Series

Anthony Grafton
Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University

Anthony Grafton recreates the discipline of chronology in early modern Europe. Technical chronology—nowadays pursued by few—was a trendy area of scholarly inquiry in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its practitioners were polymaths, who used both astronomical data and historical research to date the events of ancient and modern, Eastern and Western history. Great scientists like Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, and great scholars like Kircher and Vico devoted time, energy and ink to this difficult but once fashionable field. This lecture explains what such great intellects saw in this apparently obscure discipline.

Museum visitors are reminded that food and drinks are not allowed in the Museum. Backpacks and other large items brought to the Museum will have to be stored; there is limited locker storage space available for these items.