his article takes up the production of ignorance in early modern academic information circulation by focusing on the question of how information changes from being present to being absent in the medium of the learned journal—in short, how knowledge becomes forgotten. To examine the processes behind this change, I have selected four exemplary late-seventeenth- to early-eighteenth-century scholars: Johannes Braun (1628–1708), Thomas Gale (1636–1702), Adriaan Reland (1676–1718), and Eusèbe Renaudot (1646–1720), and tracked their reception over the course of the eighteenth century, as indicated by patterns of references to them in learned journals. To this end, I chose four exemplary eighteenth-century learned journals, the [Nova] Acta Eruditorum, the Journal des Savants, the Maandelyke Uittreksels, of Boekzaal der geleerde waerelt, and the Philosophical Transactions, and searched digitally for all references to the four scholars between 1 January 1701 and 31 December 1800. Each journal page bearing at least one reference to one of these scholars is treated as a textual unit for the extraction of co-citation data. These co-citation data were then used as material for a diachronic network analysis of the reference patterns. The results show that the frequency of references made to all four scholars began to decline demonstrably in the middle of the eighteenth century and that by the last quarter they had become forgotten, that is, effectively “ignored.” These processes turn out to be context-sensitive and not determined by the quality of the contributions of those who became forgotten.

Adriaan Reland (1676-1718), Arabist, Cartographer, Antiquarian and Scholar of Comparative Religion covers the intellectual achievements of a remarkable man: Adriaan Reland, professor of Oriental languages (1701) and Hebrew Antiquities (1713) at the University of Utrecht from 1701 to 1718. Although he never travelled beyond the borders of his home country, he had an astonishingly broad worldview. The contributions in this volume illuminate Reland's many accomplishments and follow his scholarly trajectory as an Orientalist, a linguist, a cartographer, a poet, and a historian of comparative religions. Reland, although a devout Protestant, believed that religions should be examined objectively on their own terms with the help of reliable and authentic documents, which would dispel the prejudices of the past. Contributors: Lot Brouwer, Ulrich Groetsch,Toon van Hal, Jason Harris, Bart Jaski, Christian Lange, Richard van Leeuwen, Remke Kruk, Anna Pytlowany, Henk J. van Rinsum, Dirk Sacré, Arnoud Vrolijk, Tobias Winnerling and Jan Just Witkam.

This paper offers an initial exploration of the impact of the Dutch United East India Company (VOC) on the circulation of linguistic knowledge. After presenting some forgotten Dutch linguistic fieldworkers who operated overseas, and after examining the fate of their works in Europe, we will examine in a second part the degree to which Europe-based scholars actively solicited VOC-actors to pass on information about the world’s languages.

Handelt over de vraag of er een verband bestaat tussen de Islam en de ideeën van René Descartes (1596-1650). Een onderzoek naar de heersende denkbeelden aan de Utrechtse universiteit rond 1690 en 1915