What did it mean to pursue science in the Ottoman Empire? Who practiced it and why? And how should scholars approach the topic today? This series of podcasts introduces new research that challenges the traditional story of science in the Ottoman Empire. Setting aside long-held assumptions of the passive reception of European science or of a golden age stymied by religious obscurantism, these podcasts explore how artisans, scholars, and others made sense of the natural world. Some examine topics and actors traditionally regarded as outside the bounds of science, such as alchemy, while others reveal connections to broader worlds of intellectual exchange. Yet others situate seemingly cerebral sciences like astronomy or medicine in the everyday contexts of religion and charity. Together they reveal a new and vibrant intellectual world that has been too often overlooked.
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What did it mean to pursue science in the Ottoman Empire? Who practiced it and why? And how should scholars approach the topic today? This series of podcasts introduces new research that challenges the traditional story of science in the Ottoman Empire. Setting aside long-held assumptions of the passive reception of European science or of a golden age stymied by religious obscurantism, these podcasts explore how artisans, scholars, and others made sense of the natural world. Some examine topics and actors traditionally regarded as outside the bounds of science, such as alchemy, while others reveal connections to broader worlds of intellectual exchange. Yet others situate seemingly cerebral sciences like astronomy or medicine in the everyday contexts of religion and charity. Together they reveal a new and vibrant intellectual world that has been too often overlooked.
with Nükhet Varlık hosted by Nir Shafir Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | SoundCloud Geneticists and historians are generally considered strange bedfellows. However, new advances in bio-archaeology and genetics are facilitating this odd coupling. In this episode, we speak to Nükhet Varlık, author of Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World : the Ottoman experience, 1347-1600 (Cambridge University Press), about how genetic evidence has transformed the study of the plague in the past ten years, allowing geneticists to more readily identify the presence of Yersinia pestis bacteria in human remains. Whereas before historians had been hesitant to diagnose diseases posthumously, they can now speak with greater certainty about the presence of plague. We then discuss the life of plague in the early modern Ottoman Empire in particular, focusing on the creation of ‘plague capitals’ in the urban centers of the Ottoman Empire following the conquest of Constantinople and how integrating the Ottoman experience of plague changes the story of how historians of medicine approach the topic. To inspire future collaborations among our listeners, we end with a peek at the process of working with geneticists and what such approaches can contribute to the study of the history of the Middle East. « Click for More »
History of Science, Ottoman or Otherwise
What did it mean to pursue science in the Ottoman Empire? Who practiced it and why? And how should scholars approach the topic today? This series of podcasts introduces new research that challenges the traditional story of science in the Ottoman Empire. Setting aside long-held assumptions of the passive reception of European science or of a golden age stymied by religious obscurantism, these podcasts explore how artisans, scholars, and others made sense of the natural world. Some examine topics and actors traditionally regarded as outside the bounds of science, such as alchemy, while others reveal connections to broader worlds of intellectual exchange. Yet others situate seemingly cerebral sciences like astronomy or medicine in the everyday contexts of religion and charity. Together they reveal a new and vibrant intellectual world that has been too often overlooked.
