Daston and Park 1998

"In placing wonder and wonders at the center of our narrative, we have had to challenge the traditional historiography of science and philosophy in fundamental ways. Most obviously, we have let go of not only the usual periodization, which divorces the medieval from the early modern study of nature, but also the much more basic ideas of distinct stages, water-sheds, new beginnings, and punctual or decisive change. These narrative conventions, imported into intellectual histoey from 18th- and 19th-century political historiography, only distort the nonlinear and nonprogressive cultural phenomena we describe. For the most part our story is not punctuated by clearly distinguished epistemes or turning points, but is instead undulatory, continuous, sometimes cyclical." (17)

The Topography of Wonder

Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia (ca. 1210)

• wonders come from novelty and ignorance of cause (23)
• paradoxography

periphery of the circular world -- more marvels (e.g. East)

language of wonders links to language of romances (33)

marvels were not necessarily threatening or an expression of anxiety; too far away

"At their most transgressive, they served to satirize courtly and aristocratic culture or to figure a fantasy realm of freedom from the sexual restrictions and pervasive poverty of European culture. The wonders of the East had overwhelmingly positive associations; liberating precisely on account of their geographical marginality -- unlike, say, the real and proximate difference represented by a resident Jewish population -- they were viewed with a relatively benign and tolerant eye." (34)

goose barnacle tree, lamb cabbage: 35-6