ABSTRACT
The epilogue provides a coda to the volume as a whole, reflecting on the concepts of distance, information, and credibility, and their relationship to notions like belief and trust. It addresses the role of new media in early modern Europe’s response to the encounters with new worlds, and discusses the various cultural, psychological, and geographical notions of distance and proximity that these media produced. From a media-geographical perspective, the epilogue highlights the importance of places and spaces in which credibility was produced, and explores the conditions under which truth and truthfulness entered processes of collective hermeneutics. Reminding us of the underlying questions that determine the consequential shape of truth and credibility, it examines which early modern forms of knowledge emerged from long-distance encounters and global exchanges of information.
