A different view of innovation and international knowledge exchange from classroom notes: the University of Edinburgh, 1604-1650

Many 17th-century student lecture notes survive from one of Europe's emerging educational centres, the University of Edinburgh. Particularly interesting are the early to mid-17th-century notes, whose content is scholastic in form, with lecturers reading passages from an authority text. The notes, however, contain a remarkably detailed account of the contemporary collapse of Aristotelian cosmology. A contemporary manuscript of teaching notes for Edinburgh's lecturers also survives, containing lists of books and manuscripts to be consulted by the students. These teaching notes were produced by a group of itinerant scholars returning to Edinburgh from centres across Europe. This chapter discusses the student notes as products of the manuscript and the cosmopolitan scholarly communities, stretching from Padua to Paris. These fascinating handwritten notes reveal how students were constantly updated on the latest developments in 17th-century scientific culture.