Steven Shapin

Simon Schaffer

Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life : Including a Translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus Physicus de Natura Aeris by Simon Schaffer

Leviathan and the Air-pump

Michael Cyril William Hunter

`Individually excellent and scholarly essays... most illuminating and thought-provoking. A conspicuous feature of the collection is the heterogeneity of the scientific topics discussed.' ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW `Essential reading for all students of Hooke and of the context of Restoration science.' Stephen Pumfrey BRITISH JNL FOR HISTORY OF SCIENCERobert Hooke (1635--1703) is best known for his Micrographia, which combined an exposition of the findings of the microscopewith speculations on a variety of scientific topics. He also made major contributions to an astonishing range of subjects, from pneumatics to geology. Equally important was his ingenuity and skill in inventing and refining scientific instruments, clocks and other technological devices.

New Studies

Robert Hooke

Pasquale Gagliardi

John Tresch

Born out of a major international dialogue held at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, Italy, this collection of essays presents innovative and provocative arguments about the claims of universal knowledge schemes and the different aesthetic and material forms in which such claims have been made and executed. Contributors take a close look at everything from religious pilgrimages, museums, and maps of the world, to search engines and automated GPS. Current obsessions in information technology, communications theory, and digital culture often concern the value and possibility of a grand accumulation of universally accessible forms of knowledge: total libraries, open data bases, ubiquitous computing, and ‘smart’ technologies. These obsessions have important social and philosophical origins, and they raise profound questions about the very nature of knowledge and its organization. This volume’s contributors draw on the histories of maps and of encyclopedias, worldviews and visionary collections, to make sense of the crucial relation between the way the world is known and how it might be displayed and transformed.

Aesthetics of Universal Knowledge

Menachem Fisch

Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas Menachem Fisch

University Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science Simon Schaffer

This collection of essays pays tribute to the Victorian intellectual, William Whewell, whose influence can be traced in fields as diverse as moral philosophy, mineralogy, architecture, the politics of education, physics and engineering.

William Whewell, a Composite Portrait

Trabajos de cristal es un conjunto de ensayos y artículos, reunidos por primera vez y traducidos al castellano, de uno de los grandes historiadores de la ciencia, Simon Schaffer. Los episodios aquí descritos comprenden desde unas portentosas transfusiones de sangre animal en la Inglaterra de la Restauración, hasta las ideas físicas y los intereses comerciales que impulsaron el negocio de las pompas de jabón en la era victoriana, pasando por las vicisitudes del experimento crucial de la óptica newtoniana, el secreto del autómata ilustrado que jugaba al ajedrez o la extraña vida social de los instrumentos astronómicos en la China y el Pacífico en la Ilustración. Trabajos de cristal quiere recoger la transparencia y la visualización de los hechos, pero también su carácter contingente, la fragilidad sobre la que se construye el edificio del saber. Schaffer desmenuza en estos nueve capítulos la trama artesanal y mundana de las operaciones científicas, indaga en sus múltiples significados y traza los intercambios con otras formas de cultura. Su mirada antropológica escruta lo que sucede fuera y dentro del laboratorio, siempre dispuesto a problematizar lo trivial, simplificar lo complejo, no dar nunca nada por hecho y menos aún lo que parece evidente.

Trabajos de Cristal

La nature à l'aube des Lumières n'est plus un livre à déchiffrer, mais un champ à travailler. Comètes, marées, tremblements de terre, cessent d'être considérés comme les prodiges d'un univers immuable et transcendant. Aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, l'avènement du capitalisme industriel et son développement mondial jouent un rôle fondamental dans la constitution des sciences modernes. La nature devenue chantier peut être explorée, contrôlée et instrumentalisée. Dans les observatoires et laboratoires, cours et académies, théâtres et manufactures, les Newton, Lavoisier, Kant, Lord Kelvin, mais aussi des artisans, des médecins, des jésuites, des hommes de spectacles s'attèlent à une nouvelle forme à la fois de connaissance et de gouvernement de la nature : les sciences expérimentales. Bien au-delà d'une simple généalogie progressiste, Simon Schaffer met en œuvre une véritable archéologie des sciences modernes, cherchant leurs racines et suivant leurs multiples ramifications sociales et culturelles, des capitales européennes jusqu'aux mondes lointains. Il éclaire les micro-pouvoirs et les dispositifs qui organisent les sciences comme technologies disciplinaires et agencement de l'information. Ces processus multiples permettent de comprendre comment ces sciences finissent par façonner un monde naturel et social à leur mesure. Simon Schaffer, historien et philosophe des sciences réputé, enseigne à l'université de Cambridge. Il est l'auteur, avec Steven Shapin, d'un ouvrage qui a fait date en histoire des sciences, Léviathan et la pompe à air : Hobbes et Boyle entre science et politique, La Découverte, 1993. Traduit de l'anglais par Frédérique Aït-Touati, Loïc Marcou, Stéphane Van Damme

La Fabrique des sciences modernes

Collection of essays focusing on the roles of intermediaries such as brokers and spies, messengers and translators, missionaries and entrepreneurs, in linking different parts of the ever more densely entangled systems of knowledge production and circulation at a key moment in the development of global scientific, commercial and political systems. The period 1770-1820 was decisive for the reformation of imperial projects in the wake of military catastrophe and politico-economic crisis, both in the Atlantic and the Asian/Pacific spheres -- economic and political worlds dominated by complex trade systems and violent contest. This conjuncture also saw the overhaul of networks and institutions of natural knowledge, whether commercial, voluntary or organs of state. Both the industrial and the second scientific revolutions have been dated to this moment. New and decisive relations were forged between different cultures' knowledge carriers. The authors consider knowledge movements of the epoch that escape simple models of metropolitan centre and remote colonial periphery. They question the immutable character of mediators and agents in knowledge communication.

Go-betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770-1820

The Brokered World

Peter Dear

Lissa Roberts

Although manual labor and theoretical invention might now seem separate ventures, they are closely linked processes. The Mindful Hand explores 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.

Simon Schaffer

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