Medieval and Early Modern Studies: David A. Boruchoff, "The Three Greatest Inventions of Modern Times: The Cultural Geography of an Idea, 1499-1620"

David A. Boruchoff (Hispanic Studies, McGill) will give a talk that will be co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and the Graduate Field Committee in Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

Abstract:

Important ideas are usually simple and seductive, able to catch and hold the imagination of a public, which then makes the idea its own. One especially long-lived example is the claim that divine providence reserved certain key discoveries and inventions for modern times. This idea—which arose in conjunction with the European Reconnaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, cut across political and religious divisions, and assisted self-proclaimed Moderns to assert their independence from their intellectual and cultural forebears—soon crystallized about three inventions in particular: the magnetic compass, the printing press, and firearms. For unlike eyeglasses, distillation, the water mill, or the mechanical clock, these three inventions enlarged the horizons of European society, and changed how peoples and nations would henceforth relate to one another. In this paper, I seek to trace the amazingly swift dissemination of the commonplace of the three greatest inventions and its use by a “who’s who” of European letters.