Scholars in Action addresses the complexities of the culture of knowledge, focusing on the scholar, or savant, as its main actor. The book explores how, and to what end, savants in the 18th Century collated, produced, critiqued, propagated, diffused, and applied knowledge.

Investigating scholars’ diverse practices of knowledge, the volume’s six sections are organised around central scholarly activities: rising and advancing, reading and judging, perceiving and reacting, printing and communicating, observing and experimenting, as well as advising and serving.

Based on a wide range of sources and looking at a great variety of savants, an international group of 40 authors open up new perspectives on eighteenth-century scholars and scholarship.



Contributors include Kirill Abrosimov, Gunhild Berg, Thomas Biskup, Holger Böning, Simona Boscani-Leoni, Barbara Braun-Bucher, Laurence Brockliss, Florence Catherine, Lorraine Daston, Simone De Angelis, Bettina Dietz, Clorinda Donato, Claudia Engler, Iris Flessenkaemper, Daniel Fulda, Marian Füssel, Martin Gierl, Rainer Godel, Karl S. Guthke, Thomas Habel, Caspar Hirschi, László Kontler, Urs Leu, Annette Meyer, Marion Mücke, Miriam Nicoli, Andreas Önnerfors, Hole Rössler, Anne Saada, Torsten Sander, Hartmut Schleiff, Ulrich Johannes Schneider, Reinhart Siegert, René Sigrist, Justin Stagl, Regula Wyss, and Simone Zurbuchen.