Fakes!? Hoaxes, Counterfeits and Deception in Early Modern Science

by Marco Beretta (Editor), Maria Conforti (Editor)

---why have fakes, forgeries, and the multiplicity of deception techniques, along with the personalities of their authors, been an object of interest in so many fields, including modern science, while scientific forgeries of the early modern age have raised comparatively less discussion? After all, this was a golden age of sorts for impostors and forgers, as well as the age when a dystopia of the universal scholarly forgery was imagined by a French erudite, Jean Hardouin, who in the late 17th century claimed that all ancient texts and remains had been aptly pieced together by a mysterious group of monks in the late middle ages…from the Introduction

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014