Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book is a cogently original account of skilled practice, its expression in writing, and its significance for the culture of knowledge as the new sciences developed in early modern Europe. With roots in the world-renewed Making and Knowing Project, it offers an important addition to the histories of skilled craft practice, of science and technology, and of the premodern and early modern periods." -- Pamela O. Long, author of Engineering the Eternal City "This is a brilliant, groundbreaking, and timely book. Through a particularly novel and exciting approach, Smith offers the first book-length study on the way early modern practitioners wrote about their skills. It is a must read for the growing community of scholars interested in material culture and in the ways how bodies, minds, things, and materials interact with each other." -- Christine Goettler, author of Last Things
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Lived Experience and the Written Word Part 1: Vernacular Theorizing in Craft 1. Is Handwork Knowledge? 2. The Metalworker's Philosophy 3. Thinking with Lizards Part 2: Writing Down Experience 4. Artisan Authors 5. Writing Kunst 6. Recipes for Kunst Part 3: Reading and Collecting 7. Who Read and Used Little Books of Art? 8. Kunst as Power: Making and Collecting Part 4: Making and Knowing 9. Reconstructing Practical Knowledge: Hastening to Experience 10. A Vocabulary for Mind-Body Knowing Epilogue: Global Routes of Practical Knowledge Acknowledgments Notes References Index
