Intellectual History Review

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Introduction

Richard Yeo

To cite this article: Richard Yeo (2010) Introduction, Intellectual History Review, 20:3, 301-302,
DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2010.492610

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Intellectual History Review 20(3) 2010: 301–302

INTRODUCTION

Richard Yeo

In The Art of Travel (1855), Francis Galton offered practical tips on how to make notes and keep
r.yeo@griffith.edu.au
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notebooks. He advised on the best kind of paper, pencil and ink, about the importance of various
kinds of pocket-book and memorandum, and on the transfer of information across them. He
stressed that notes must be made while the memory of events was fresh, and in a manner that
served not only the individual who made them: ‘It is very important that what is written should
be intelligible to a stranger after a long lapse of time’.1
Scholars of early-modern Europe will be struck by the familiarity of such advice. It seems that
at various times the skills and tricks already fashioned in one context had to be reinvented for
another. One can find similar preoccupations in Renaissance travel advice (ars apodemica),
humanist and Jesuit pedagogy, the ‘Ephemerides’ of the intelligencer, Samuel Hartlib, and in the
‘Queries’ (questionnaires) drawn up by the Royal Society of London to guide the note-taking of
travellers.2 Galton was recruiting a new audience of explorers and adventurers to the projects of
the Royal Geographical Society of London (established in 1830), coaching them on how best to
record their observations. Galton’s cousin, Charles Darwin, had already shown the value of such
collated information: after his voyage on the Beagle, the very private notebooks he kept from
1836 profited from notes taken by other travellers.3
The articles in this special issue showcase the diversity of methods and purposes of note-taking
over the period from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century. Among the kinds of notes and
notebooks discussed (or mentioned) here are the humanist commonplace book; slips of paper glued
into notebooks under topical headings; notes from sermons and lectures; the spiritual diary (as kept
by Puritans and Jesuits); the loose notes and ‘workdiaries’ of Robert Boyle; the merchant’s waste
book, journal and ledger; the travel journals of scientific explorers such as Alexander von
Humboldt; the logbooks of the French navy as exemplified in the voyages of Nicolas Baudin; and
the case-notes, records and correspondence that contributed to a storehouse of experimental knowl-
edge on smallpox prophylaxis, and made possible the rapid assessment, refinement and global
spread of Edward Jenner’s vaccination. Even in this necessarily limited collection of examples,
the range of disciplines and activities involved is extensive: from spiritual and moral reflection,

1 F. Galton, The Art of Travel: Or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries, introduction by D. Middleton

(London: Phoenix Press, 1971; reprint of fifth edition, London, 1872), 26.
2 On Hartlib and his circle, see S. Clucas, ‘Samuel Hartlib’s Ephemerides, 1635–59, and the Pursuit of Scientific and Philo-

sophical Manuscripts: The Religious Ethos of an Intelligencer’, The Seventeenth Century, 6 (1991), 33–55; M. Greengrass,
‘An “Intelligencer’s Workshop”: Samuel Hartlib’s Ephemerides’, Studia Comeniana et Historica, 26 (1996), 48–62.
3 Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836–1844: Geology, Transmutation of Species, Metaphysical Enquiries, transcribed and

edited by P.H. Barrett and others (London: British Museum, 1987). See also http://darwin-online.org.uk.

Intellectual History Review

ISSN 1749-6977 print/ISSN 1749-6985 online
©2010 International Society for Intellectual History
http://www.informaworld.com/journals DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2010.492610
302 R. YEO

to theological, philological and historical scholarship as conducted by prolific note-takers such

as Conrad Gesner and Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, to natural history and natural philosophy pursued
under the aegis of newly formed academies and societies. It also covers notes taken in various places
and under differing conditions: notes entered from books in studies and libraries; others made in
the more challenging situation of medical examinations; and those captured on arduous journeys,
such as astronomical and ethnographic observations taken at Jesuit missions in China and Japan,
while climbing mountains on Tenerife or in South America, or voyaging the Southern oceans.
During the early-modern period there are some constant themes, such as the function of notes
both as memory prompts and as permanent records, the tension between private notes and those
intended for public use, and the inevitable gap between precepts and individual practice. Closer
study of the patterns and protocols of note-taking may reveal some interesting contrasts with
‘modern’ developments in certain domains – such as the more regulated and formalized use of
notebooks in scientific laboratories by the 1860s.4 Obviously, it will take more than a handful of
articles to specify and classify the cognitive and social functions of notes in early-modern Europe,
but some work has been done and more is on the way.5 Ann Blair’s opening article, which
includes consideration of the medieval background, will serve as an introduction to the issue;
individual contributors cite the secondary scholarship relevant to their topics.
The genesis of this special issue was the symposium on ‘Notebooks and Note-Takers: da Vinci
to Darwin’, held at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, in July 2008. The title was ambi-
tious, to say the least; the audacious scope was intended to encourage both speakers and audience
to imagine what a history of note-taking might look like. I want to acknowledge formally the
support that made this event possible. I co-convened the symposium with Michael Bennett, draw-
ing on funds from the Australian Research Council via the Network for Early European Research
(NEER). This allowed us to invite speakers from Canada, France, New Zealand and the USA, as
well as from Australia. I thank Anne Scott and Claire McIlroy from NEER for their advice and
administration. Other considerable funding was provided by the State Library of Queensland,
which generously gave us a space in their splendid venue by the Brisbane River. The Griffith
Centre for Cultural Research, Griffith University, provided administrative help and hosted the
opening reception. I thank Andy Bennett (director), Ian Woodward (deputy-director) and Jill
Jones (events’ coordinator). Ann Blair kindly agreed to give the opening keynote address, as part
of the Library’s public lecture series. I thank Peter Anstey, Yasmin Haskell and Lyn Tribble for
their papers at the symposium and their valuable participation in the discussions. I am also grate-
ful to Karine Chemla and her colleagues for inviting me to the University of Paris-Diderot in
April and May 2008. Their workshops allowed me to trial some ideas for the symposium in
conversations that ranged well beyond early-modern Europe.
Finally, Ann Blair and I would like to thank the editors of this journal for their initial encour-
agement and continuing advice; and all the contributors for their stimulating collaboration. We
also greatly appreciate the help of those scholars and colleagues who acted as anonymous referees
for the journal. Their generous commitment of time and expertise was crucial, but must (by conven-
tion) remain unheralded. We can, however, celebrate their efforts as a form of academic sainthood.
Griffith University

4
See Reworking the Bench. Research Notebooks in the History of Science, edited by F. Holmes, J. Renn and H.-J.
Rheinberger (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003). For the social sciences, B. Webb, ‘The Art of Note-
Taking’, Appendix C in My Apprenticeship by Beatrice Webb, second edition (London: Longmans [1946], first published
1926), 364–72.
5 See, for example, Lire, copier, écrire, edited by E. Décultot (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 2003);

A. Blair, ‘Note Taking as an Art of Transmission’, Critical Inquiry, 31 (2004), 85–107; L. Daston, ‘Taking Note(s)’, Isis,
115 (2005), 443–8; R. Yeo, ‘Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural History in Seventeenth-
Century England’, History of Science, 45 (2007), 1–46.