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SUMMARY:Taxis: Mobile Epistemic Infrastructures in the 17th Century and th
 e Creation of Research Disciplines
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260513T140000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260513T160000
DTSTAMP:20260512T052801Z
UID:f4400e4b-bb2d-f111-88b5-7c1e52046c40
CREATED:20260401T110948Z
DESCRIPTION:Scholars commonly apply the moniker "taxonomic age" to the eig
 hteenth century despite the fact that the term taxonomy did not exist duri
 ng that century. Only in 1813 did the botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candoll
 e (1778-1841) coin taxonomie by conjoining taxis\, or battle array\, with 
 nomos\, or law. This talk revives the prior\, seventeenth-century usage of
  the first of these terms\, taxis\, as an inherently anti-systematic\, uns
 table\, mobile\, and conjectural order. Experimental philosophers deployed
  taxis to describe matter at a time when chemical analysis\, microscopic o
 bservations\, and new theories about the nature of matter rendered the sub
 stance and boundaries of material objects newly uncertain. The resurrectio
 n of taxis highlights ephemeral ontologies and probabilist epistemologies 
 in early modern notions of order\, from orders of matter to orders of know
 ledge or disciplines. Although probabilist\, mobile epistemic infrastructu
 res were second-best compared to the certainty that everyone craved\, they
  were essential to reorienting the nature of disciplines in ways that woul
 d create what we currently think of as research disciplines. I will take a
 s my central case the Taxis of Chambers\, the name that Johann Daniel Majo
 r (1634-1693) gave to what he claimed was a new discipline concerning the 
 best way to arrange a collection.
LAST-MODIFIED:20260401T111053Z
LOCATION:All Souls College - Hovenden Room\, Hovenden Room All Souls Colle
 ge High Street Oxford Oxfordshire OX1 4AL United Kingdom
SPEAKER:Professor Vera Keller (University of Oregon)
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