In a bid to claim scientific objects as requiring a significant amount of conceptual labor, this book looks sequentially at instruments, habits, and museums. The goal is to uncover how, together, these material and immaterial activities, rules, and commitments form one meaningful and credible blueprint revealing the building blocks of knowledge production. They serve to conceptualize and examine the entire life of an instrument: from its ideation and craft to its use, reuse, circulation, recycling, and (if not obliterated) its final entry into a museum. It is such an epistemological triptych that guides this investigation.
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1A Short Case Study: The Early Académie royale des sciences in Paris
2Reading This Book
Part 1: Organum
Introduction
1 Quid organum erat? The Idea of Instrument in Early Modern Europe
1Organum scientiae: Definitions and Examples
2Organ-ization of Knowledge
2 Organ Making and Natural Philosophical Knowledge in Marin Mersennes
Harmonie Universelle
1Mersennes Seven Books on Instruments in the Harmonie universelle
2The Organ and Mersennes Epistemology of Natural Philosophical Knowledge
3Musical Instruments and the parfait musicien
Part 2: Habitus
Introduction
3 Habitus in corpore, habitus in anima: Making and Thinking in Early Modern
Europe
1Defining habitus in Early Modern Europe
2Habitus and Descartess Logic of Practice
3Habitus and the Concept of Knowledge Production
4Blaise Pascal, coutume, and the Arithmetical Machine
4 From idiotae to artistes: Artisans, Instruments, and the Nature of
Craftsmanship in Early Modern Europe
1Descartes, Artisans, and âmes réglées
2Who Assists Whom: The Structural Dynamic of Artisan and Savant
Interactions
3From artiste to Toyware Manufacturing
Part 3: Museum
Introduction
5 Repair, Restoration, Exhibition: Instruments and the Epistemic Value of
Brokenness
1Restorer v. Conservator: How to Repair Damaged Instruments?
2Reconstruction and Restoration: Abbé Nollets Scientific Instruments
3Identity, Integrity, Authenticity: Between the Unit of the Total and the
Unit of the Whole
4Reuse and Recycle: Exhibiting the DIY of Scientists and Craftsmen
6 Instrument Trajectories: Ways of Knowing the World
1Collecting Instruments
2Knowing Through Playing
3Digitizing Collections
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Jean-François Gauvin, Ph.D. (2008) is an associate professor of history and museum studies at Université Laval in Québec city. He has published numerous articles on scientific instruments and two frequently cited edited volumes on globes and abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet.
