Guest Lecture "Knowledge Without Borders: Languages and Networks of Sciences in the Early Middle Ages" on April 28
As part of her BA seminar on "Old English in Switzerland" this spring semester, PD Dr. Annina Seiler is delighted to invite you to a guest lecture by Prof. James T. Palmer from the University of St Andrews. Prof. Palmer's lecture, entitled "Knowledge Without Borders: Languages and Networks of Sciences in the Early Middle Ages", will take place in Room RAK-E-6 (Rämistrasse 73 in Zürich, https://www.plaene.uzh.ch/rak) on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, from 10:15-12:00.
Everyone is welcome!
For more information on the content of the lecture, please read the following abstract:
Histories of sciences and languages are not natural bedfellows. Yet for the early Middle Ages some of the richest evidence for interest in multilingualism and translation comes from dossiers on natural philosophy and medicine. These dossiers were often assembled in monastic centres across Western Europe where there were productive tensions between people from different backgrounds, trying to address shared questions with technical literatures that were often not readily available, accessible, or comprehensible. This lecture explores how people navigated these challenges collectively, both within institutions and across their wide-ranging intellectual networks. Highlighting examples from calendars, astronomy, and medicine, it outlines how communities built up understandings of the natural world in ways that encouraged linguistic curiosity and playfulness. It is argued that in areas where late Latin was less dominant, such as the English kingdoms and the Rhineland, this dynamic encouraged more engagement with the vernacular, leading to developments such as the creation of a rich medical literature in Old English.