Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (review)

The genre of conference proceedings is a dying one, and in many cases for good reason. Too often they stage a cacophony of scholarly voices—some of them playing their discipline skillfully, others following a solitary, slightly offbeat tune far away from the crowd, and yet others missing the tone of the orchestration altogether. However, Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, which presents the fruits of a scholarly workshop, merits attention precisely because of its thought-provoking diversity.

The concept of knowledge, the older brother of information, provides the recurrent theme for this volume, and the essays explore its variations. Some address areas that coeditor Pamela Smith has brought to the attention of historians of science for a number of years, especially the interaction between texts and skills, books, and objects. But even in the thematic section devoted to books and texts alone there are many motifs of interest to historians of technology. Scott Black’s close reading of Robert Boyle’s “Proemial Essay” traces the development of the essay genre as a method, and thus as a theoretical laboratory setting for the scientific mind; Rudolf Dekker demonstrates the connections between timekeeping and autobiographical writing in a seventeenth-century Dutch setting; and Herman Pleij, Arianne Baggerman, and Lori Anne Ferrell study different aspects of the production, reception, and use of knowledge in the medium of print and shorthand writing.

The section on “Making of Knowledge from the Margins,” apart from being the one of most relevance to the audience of Technology and Culture, is characterized by the plain ingenuity of the authors’ questions and their ingenuously clear answers. In her study on the construction of the Canal du Midi in seventeenth-century France, Chandra Mukerji inquires about the geographical, cultural, and social origins of the many women employed in this project. As she explains, their intriguing story is one of folklore, engineering knowledge, physical strength, and opportunity. Londa Schiebinger, whose rich contribution reveals the politics of naming practices in the case of eighteenth-century botanical nomenclature, declares that “it is the job of the historian to ask why a particular naming system developed and not another” (p. 95). Along the same lines, Simon Werrett proposes a social reading of the history of pyrotechnics and examines the close association between chemistry and fireworks, which seems almost natural today but was once a matter that settled the competition between different groups of fireworks experts. Finally, through her analysis of an altarpiece by Jan van Eyck as a tangible instructional handbook for artisans, Linda Seidel explores the interaction of observation, insight, imitation, and instruction in the context of art and craft.

The final section of Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, “The Reform of Knowledge,” focuses on various aspects of change. André Wakefield presents a straightforward account of the development of Enlightened German universities and mining academies, institutions whose goals and purposes were increasingly driven by financial considerations. Jonathan Sheehan’s essay on Protestant antiquarians and their search for an understanding of the ancient Jewish temple finds echoes in Carina L. Johnson’s review of the Counter-Reformation and idolatry. Claudia Swan’s close look at a handful of medical professionals in early modern Holland reveals how their collections of res naturae embodied their knowledge: In one instance, an academic position would be awarded on the grounds of a collection rather than scholarly credentials. But the most intriguing account of change in the world of knowledge is provided by Ole Peter Grell, who follows his research subject Ole Worm “in the search for knowledge.” Grell paints a picture of a curious man who, when his scholarly travels ended with an academic position at the University of Copenhagen, reeled in knowledge from around the world by consulting scholars, his traveling students, books, and numerous other media. Regarding Rosicrucianism, palingenesis (a method for extracting the quintessence of plants), and William Harvey’s theories on...