Early Modern Low Countries 3 (2019) 2, pp. 208-233 - eISSN: 2543-1587 208 DOI 10.18352/emlc.111 - URL: http://www.emlc-journal.org Publisher: Stichting EMLC, supported by Utrecht University Library Open Access Journals | Te Netherlands Copyright: Te Author(s). Tis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Te Serious Naturalist and the Frivolous Collector: Convergent and Divergent Approaches to Nature in D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer Gijsbert M. van de Roemer Gijsbert M. van de Roemer is Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His felds of interests are the history of collections, the relationship between the visual arts and the natural sciences, cultural life in Amsterdam in the early modern period, and modern museology. He has published on several subjects, including the Dutch collectors Simon Schijnvoet, Frederik Ruysch, Levinus Vincent, and Maria Sibylla Merian, and the art theorists Samuel van Hoogstraten and Willem Goeree. Recently he worked on Dutch collections of natural history during the French period (1795-1815). Abstract Te traditional literature on D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer depicts a diference between the editor of the text and images, Simon Schijnvoet (1652-1727), and the original author, Georg Everhard Rumphius (1627-1702). Schijnvoet was seen as the ‘frivolous collector’ who did not understand the motives of the original author, whereas Rumphius was seen as the ‘serious naturalist’ and biologist avant la lettre, whose work predated Linnaeus. Tis paper re-evaluates these contrasting views by placing both men against a broader background of a ‘scientifc culture’ and ‘knowledge production’, that was in part informed by the practice of collecting. By discussing their views on the classifcation of specimens, the formation of specifc stones, and the locality of fossilised shells, questions emerge about Rumphius’s modernity and Schijnvoet’s alleged indiference. Even though their opinions ofen diverged, it will be shown that the motives and interests of the two men were not that diferent. Keywords: natural history, history of collections, empiricism, astrology, taxonomy, conchology, mineralogy