Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400 - 1800
336 pages
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4 color plates, 51 halftones
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6 x 9
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© 2007
The fruits of knowledge—such as books, data, and ideas—tend to generate far more attention than the ways in which knowledge is produced and acquired. Correcting this imbalance, Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe brings together a wide-ranging yet tightly integrated series of essays that explore how knowledge was obtained and demonstrated in Europe during an intellectually explosive four centuries, when standard methods of inquiry took shape across several fields of intellectual pursuit.
Composed by scholars in disciplines ranging from the history of science to art history to religious studies, the pieces collected here look at the production and consumption of knowledge as a social process within many different communities. They focus, in particular, on how the methods employed by scientists and intellectuals came to interact with the practices of craftspeople and practitioners to create new ways of knowing. Examining the role of texts, reading habits, painting methods, and countless other forms of knowledge making, this volume brilliantly illuminates the myriad ways these processes affected and were affected by the period’s monumental shifts in culture and learning.
Composed by scholars in disciplines ranging from the history of science to art history to religious studies, the pieces collected here look at the production and consumption of knowledge as a social process within many different communities. They focus, in particular, on how the methods employed by scientists and intellectuals came to interact with the practices of craftspeople and practitioners to create new ways of knowing. Examining the role of texts, reading habits, painting methods, and countless other forms of knowledge making, this volume brilliantly illuminates the myriad ways these processes affected and were affected by the period’s monumental shifts in culture and learning.
“Pamela Smith and Benjamin Schmidt have gathered together a wide-ranging and provocative set of original essays that successfully demonstrate how contingent the process of making knowledge was during a period of fundamental epistemological change. This is a finely crafted and conceptualized collection.”—
Deborah Harkness, University of Southern California
“The major transformations of knowledge and social order in early modern Europe have long posed exciting and challenging problems for historians. This carefully organized new collection addresses these problems by focusing on the ways in which knowledge was then produced and how the status of knowledge was thus changed. Contributors show impressively how a much broader range of kinds of knowledge must be studied, juxtaposing the ways of knowing of painters and travelers, of chemists and midwives. They also show how a decisive aspect of knowledge making depended on innovativeand intense relations between scholars and artisans: traditions of recipe-making and of artful design were essential to the most important developments in ways of knowing.”—
Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge
"This text is recommended for both specialists and non-specialists alike because of both the breadth of the contributions and the key lesson that it teaches: namely, that knowledge can be the result of a bewildering and surprising variety of processes. . . . In general, all the contributions make for stimulating reading and serve as useful introductions to current debates and problems."—Michael J. Sauter, H-Net Review
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Knowledge and Its Making in Early Modern Europe
Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Knowledge and Its Making in Early Modern Europe
Pamela H. Smith and Benjamin Schmidt
Making Knowledge from the Margins
1. Women Engineers and the Culture of the Pyrenees: Indigenous Knowledge and Engineering in Seventeenth-Century France
Chandra Mukerji
2. Visual Representation as Instructional Text: Jan van Eyck and The Ghent Altarpiece
Linda Seidel
3. Explosive Affinities: Pyrotechnic Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Simon Werrett
4. Naming and Knowing: The Global Politics of Eighteenth-Century Botanical Nomenclatures
Londa Schiebinger
Practices of Reading and Writing
5. Novel Knowledge: Innovation in Dutch Literature and Society of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Herman Pleij
6. Watches, Diary Writing, and the Search for Self-Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century
Rudolf Dekker
7. The Moral of the Story: Children's Reading and the Catechism of Nature around 1800
1. Women Engineers and the Culture of the Pyrenees: Indigenous Knowledge and Engineering in Seventeenth-Century France
Chandra Mukerji
2. Visual Representation as Instructional Text: Jan van Eyck and The Ghent Altarpiece
Linda Seidel
3. Explosive Affinities: Pyrotechnic Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Simon Werrett
4. Naming and Knowing: The Global Politics of Eighteenth-Century Botanical Nomenclatures
Londa Schiebinger
Practices of Reading and Writing
5. Novel Knowledge: Innovation in Dutch Literature and Society of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Herman Pleij
6. Watches, Diary Writing, and the Search for Self-Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century
Rudolf Dekker
7. The Moral of the Story: Children's Reading and the Catechism of Nature around 1800
Arianne Baggerman
8. Method as Knowledge: Scribal Theology, Protestantism, and the Reinvention of Shorthand in Sixteenth-Century England
Lori Anne Ferrell
9. Boyle's Essay: Genre and the Making of Early Modern Knowledge
Scott Black
The Reform of Knowledge
10. Making Sense of Medical Collections in Early Modern Holland: The Uses of Wonder
Claudia Swan
11. In Search of True Knowledge: Ole Worm (1588-1654) and the New Philosophy
Ole Peter Grell
12. Stone Gods and Counter-Reformation Knowledges
Carina L. Johnson
13. Temple and Tabernacle: The Place of Religion in Early Modern England
Jonathan Sheehan
14. The Fiscal Logic of Enlightened German Science
André Wakefield
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
8. Method as Knowledge: Scribal Theology, Protestantism, and the Reinvention of Shorthand in Sixteenth-Century England
Lori Anne Ferrell
9. Boyle's Essay: Genre and the Making of Early Modern Knowledge
Scott Black
The Reform of Knowledge
10. Making Sense of Medical Collections in Early Modern Holland: The Uses of Wonder
Claudia Swan
11. In Search of True Knowledge: Ole Worm (1588-1654) and the New Philosophy
Ole Peter Grell
12. Stone Gods and Counter-Reformation Knowledges
Carina L. Johnson
13. Temple and Tabernacle: The Place of Religion in Early Modern England
Jonathan Sheehan
14. The Fiscal Logic of Enlightened German Science
André Wakefield
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
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History: European History
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
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