The aim of this project is to foster a historiography that does justice both to the realization that scientific knowledge is constructed by local, contingent, and contextual processes, and the claims of science to objective validity.

This project will construct an inventory of possible conceptions of the resistance of the world to scientists’ claims and theories.

“Temminck’s Order” is the scientific biography of Coenraad Jacob Temminck (1778–1850), a Dutch naturalist and the first director of ’s Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden.

In what way is constructivist logic able to account for both the role of the judging agent in inference and the universal claims of logical validity?

Nature and History, Towards a Hermeneutic Philospohy of Historiography of Science

From 1550 onwards, a great interest in the natural world developed across Europe. This interest was not only stimulated by a growing knowledge of local flora and fauna, but also by the import of numerous exotic animal and plant species. Think, for instance, of researches and collectors like Gessner…

This project tries to explain the persistence of this cultural repertoire by zooming in on (1) interaction between idioms (cultural repertoires) available to scholars at certain points in time, (2) mechanisms that help transmit repertoires across time and place, and (3) rhetorical purposes for which…

How did learned natural historical inquiries into the underwater world develop in eighteenth-century Europe?

Leiden University was the first university to be established in the Netherlands. William of Orange gave Leiden Academia Lugduno Batava in 1575, it is said in recognition of the city’s courageous resistance against the seige by the Spanish invaders.

Learn the newest insights from the researchers who uncover them.

Research seminar

With its iconic buildings, Leiden University has a strong presence throughout the city. The university has left its mark clearly on museum collections in the city.

Historiography of science is in its current self-image a non-evaluative discipline. Its main goal is to understand past processes of knowledge formation on their own terms. In the last few decades this approach has greatly improved our understanding of the phenomenon of science. Yet, something strange…

The multiple connections between emblematics and Natural History in the broader perspective of their underlying artistic, literary, political and religious ideologies.

Lecture, Keynote