Silent Messengers

Book excerpt: This book speaks about a world of mute objects ranging from plant bulbs, divining rods, and archeological findings to drawn, painted, or printed images. It describes the functions of these objects as ambiguous and polyvalent carriers of knowledge, and it analyzes the ways in which networks of scholars, craftsmen, mathematicians, anatomy professors, or merchants active in the Low Countries attributed new meanings to them. The book examines a period in which cities like Antwerp and Amsterdam were nodal points in the international exchange of goods, news, and skills. (Series: Low Countries Studies on the Circulation of Natural Knowledge - Vol. 1)