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The volume presents a collection of revised and updated contributions to an international conference held in October 2011 on current issues in historical research on early modern knowledge and science and their connections. It looks at the various ways, in which the 'new science' was embedded in traditions, on the on the hand, and concentrates on the joint role of experts and lay persons in its making, on the other. It highlights in particular the various forms of early modern natural history, scientific treatises in a narrower sense of the term, tradiions going back to antiquity, travel accounts, chronicles, correspondences, naturalia, oral accounts and personal observations, which mirror the dialectic relationship between learned and popular knowledge. The relationship of knowledge and science is investigated in particular in connection with early modern balneology and attempts at systematizing knowledge about animals.

Die Beiträge des Bandes analysieren frühneuzeitliche Personenkonzepte. Sie nähern sich so einer grundlegenden Kategorie der europäischen Geschichte, der sog. Individualisierung. Seit Jacob Burckhardt wird Individualisierung als Ausgangspunkt moderner Lebenshaltungen in Europa gehandelt und gerne als nicht hinterfragbare Einheit verstanden. Der vorliegende Band untersucht Formen frühneuzeitlicher Individualisierung, indem er diese in ihre einzelnen Bestandteile aufbricht.