STS Colloquium: Anthony Grafton Mar 21

Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, delivers an STS colloquium talk titled “The Marriage of Divination and Philology: An Inquiry into the Terminology and Practice of Scholarship in the Early Modern Period” on Thursday, March 21, 5:00-6:30pm in Buchanan Tower 1197.

Divination, in modern textual criticism, is a laudatory term for conjectural emendations of high quality, often used without much reflection. In fact, philology and divination have had a close and uncomfortable relationship for millennia. Beginning in the late Renaissance and moving, eventually, back to the ancient world, this lecture asks why humanists have so often felt both attracted and repelled by divination.