Transmission of Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Britain

John Regan is Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research interests fall into two main areas. Firstly, he is interested in the new forms of knowledge that might be discovered or indeed wrought by digital technology. Secondly, he has published extensively in 18th-century literature and aesthetics. He is the author of Poetry and the Idea of Progress, 1760–1790 (2018) and has co-edited Rethinking British Romantic History 1770–1845 (2014). In October 2023, he published his second monograph entitled Semantic Change and Collective Knowledge in 18th Century Britain. This is a digital enquiry into the forms of knowledge embodied in historical corpora and only made visible using digital tools. He is currently funded by the British Academy on a two-year project investigating the United Nations’ corpus.

• Introduction: New Perspectives on Knowledge Transmission in 18th-Century Britain 1 Transmission to Posterity and, Detailing the Method2 ‘System’ from the Stars to the Operating Theatre 3 Transmitting the Pre-Romantic Body: ‘Irritability’, ‘Sensibility’ and Laurence Sterne4 John Locke, Volition and Sensation5 Transmitting the Materials of Money: From Coins to ComputersConclusion: Knowledge Transmission and the Extended MindIndex