‘Een schat van alderleij natuurelijke vreemdigheden’. Over de relatie tussen academisch erfgoed en wetenschapsgeschiedenis

Abstract

'A Treasure of all kinds of natural curiosities'. About the relation between Academic Cultural Heritage and the History of Science and Scholarship' In this paper a survey is given of the significance of academic cultural heritage and its potential value for historians of science. In the first part a review is presented of the genesis of academic collections, and their use in the past. A scheme for institutional and intellectual collections, developed in 2005 by Marta Lourenco, is outlined for the Dutch readers. The second part of the paper investigates the potential value of the academic collections for researchers of the history of science and the humanities as an archive representing the emergence and development of scientific practices in the past. The paper ends with some remarks concerning the present and future collecting policy of university and other museums for the history of science, based on the condition that future researchers should be able to benefit from these newly collected objects.