A History of Curiosity

The author's grasp of the vast, often obscure, but highly interesting body of literature which emerged in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries commands the attention of a wide readership outside purely academic boundaries. Stagl weaves together a series of separate studies, emphasizing links between the figures, the philosophies and the literature of early modern times; links which have previously only been suspected. In focusing on the ars apodemica, or art of travelling, a body of formal instruction on how to travel, observe and record the information gathered, Stagl demonstrates the origins of the characteristic inquisitive and systematizing spirit of the modern West. A History of Curiosity examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a critical-historical perspective. The two principal methods of research, travel and the questionnaire, are studied in the context of the social conditions and intellectual trends of early modern times.