The Mindful Hand

by Roberts, Lissa L.

• ISBN13: 9789069844831
• ISBN10: 9069844834
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-02-15
• Publisher: Edita Pub House of the Royal

Summary

Although manual labor and theoretical invention might now seem separate ventures, they are closely linked processes.The Mindful Handexplores innovative areas of European society between the late Renaissance and the period of early industrialization where the enterprise of knowledge and production relied on the most intimate connections of thought and toil. It explains how philosophers and laborers collaborated to pioneer technical change alongside knowledge formation. The essays gathered here help show how these projects were pursued together, yet why, in retrospect, the very categories of science and technology emerged as seemingly distinct endeavors.

Author Biography

Lissa L. Roberts is associate professor of the history of science at the University Twente, the Netherlands.
Simon Schaffer is professor of the history of science at the University of Cambridge.
Peter Dear is the White Professor of the History of Science at Cornell University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Workshops of the Hand and Mind
Introduction	p. 1
Comets and cannonballs: reading technology in a sixteenth-century library	p. 11
In a sixteenth-century goldsmith's workshop	p. 33
Constructive thinking: a case for dioptrics	p. 59
Nature's Oeconomy
Introduction	p. 85
Between preceddent and experiment: restoring the Acqua Vergine in Rome (1560-70)	p. 95
Amending nature: draining the English fens	p. 117
The Beemster Polder: conservative invention and Holland's great pleasure garden	p. 145
Demonstration and verification in engineering: ascertaining truth and telling fictions along the Canal du Midi	p. 169
Geographies of Skill
Introduction	p. 189
Mapping steam engines and skill in eighteenth-century Holland	p. 197
Wind-gun, air-gun or pop-gun: the fortunes of a philosophical instrument	p. 221
Apothecary shops, laboratories and chemical manufacture in eighteenth-century Germany	p. 247
'The charter'd Thames': naval architecture and experimental spaces in Georgian Britain	p. 279
Art and Industry
Introduction	p. 309
From the grand whim to the gasworks: 'philosophical fireworks' in Georgian England	p. 325
The intersection of industry and the state in eighteenth-century Britain	p. 349
Becoming competitive: England's papermaking apprenticeship, 1700-1800	p. 379
The identity engine: printing and publishing at the beginning of the knowledge economy	p. 403
Epilogues
Towards a genealogy of modern science	p. 431
Thoughtful doing and early-modern oeconomy	p. 443
List of contributors	p. 453
List of illustrations	p. 457
Bibliography	p. 461
Index	p. 491
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