Copying images in the archives of the early Royal Society

Abstract

This article argues that the copying of text and image was a key process in acquiring, approving, and recording knowledge in the early Royal Society of London. In particular, it focuses on how the administrative archives were set up and sustained in the nascent Society to preserve and establish new knowledge through a copying practice. Images were copied alongside texts to facilitate the collaborative scientific practice among the members of the Royal Society; to communicate essential features of an argument; to serve as proof of rare phenomena; and to establish priority for an invention or an idea. This copying practice was part of a unique system of emphasizing, prioritizing, and preserving for contemporary and future Fellows what was deemed important, groundbreaking , or useful knowledge.

Ottoman plants, nature studies, and the attentiveness of translational labor

“…In fact, the craze for new and foreign plants in the seventeenth century did not lead to a cornucopia of idiosyncratic images; rather, it stimulated reproductions of the very same images in circulation. 45 Since imported and newly bred flowers in gardens were part of the blossoming consumer culture of the Ottoman political elite, such floral images on the move were rarely aides de memoire based on first-hand observation. Their key feature is their dependency on other drawings, which served varied ends in other workshops, including as inspirations for textile designs.…”