Blair, Ann2019-10-082000Blair, Ann. "The Practices of Erudition According to Morhof." In Mapping the World of Learning: The Polyhistor of Daniel Georg Morhof, edited by Françoise Waquet, 59-74. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2000.3447043997978-3447043991http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41495318In approaching this topic, I have felt as if "I am entering an ocean where it is hard to find a port, and where the danger of shipwreck from rocks and sandbanks is great"i . I have come back from my venture with a trawl of quotations and observations particularly from the liber bibliothecarius, which hardly exhaust or provide a systematic account of the practices of erudition according to Morhof--I will not address excerpting, learned conversation and collegiality, or rhetoric among other possible topics. I have focused instead on two aspects of Morhof's conception of erudition, which highlight a tension in his thought between, on the one hand, his optimistic call for a collaborative program of empirical research into books (his historia literario-libraria, to use his biographer Moeller's phrase), and, on the other hand, a strand of pessimism stemming from a traditional religious sensibility (distinct from the theological) which reminds him of the limits of human knowledge.en-USMonograph or Book2019-10-08