Summary of two articles
Summary of two articles
The reading for this week consisted of two articles: Pamela Long’s “Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars” [2] and Jim Bennett’s “Presidential Address: Knowing and doing in the sixteenth century” [1].
Long’s article is both well written and well organized. Her thesis is that political and military pressures of fifteenth century Italy and southern Germany led to increased patronage and authorship of the mechanical arts, in what she sees as an alliance between techne and praxis. Practitioners of military engineering, architecture, and sculpture wrote about their art and linked it back to ancient traditions, which subsequently gave these texts and their practitioners an elevated status. There are two related points to her thesis: one which she implies, and one which she clearly states herself. The first is that the kind of alliance she depicts did not already exist in Europe in, say, the fourteenth century. The second is that the authorship of this period led to widespread appropriation of the newly available texts by learned culture. She elaborates on her thesis for a few pages, then provides a wealth of evidence by looking at specific examples within four distinct groups of texts, with the following structure:
- Illustrated treatises in Latin from the first half of the fifteenth century
- Kyeser’s Bellifortis, dedicated to Ruprecht
- Fontana’s Bellicorum instrumentorum liber, probably dedicated to the condottiero Francesco Carmagnola
- Taccola’s De ingeneis and De machinis, dedicated to Sigismund
- Treatises in German from throughout the century, mostly on gunpowder
artillery
- The unknown author of Cgm 600, which includes a unique depiction of the individuality of gunners
- The unknown author of the Feurwerkbuch, intended to be read by gunners and princes alike
- The Zeugb�cher of Maximilian
- Spencer MS 104 in the New York Public Library, clearly intended for a wealthy patron
- Humanist texts in Latin that support her argument
- Alberti’s De re aedificatoria, presented to Pope Nicholas V, and his Della pittura
- Nicholas of Cusa’s set of Idiota treatises, which argue for the importance of practical knowledge
- Valturio’s De re militari, commissioned by the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfa Malatesta
- Texts in Italian by practitioners of the mechanical arts, from the second half of
the century.
- Ghiberti’s Commentarii
- Averlino’s first Italian vernacular architectural treatise, and work for Francesco Sforza on the ideal city
- Piero della Francesca’s works showing the relationship between mathematics and painting
- Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s Opusculum de architectura dedicated to Federico II da Montefeltre, and his two Trattati
- da Vinci and his Madrid Codices
Her purpose in bringing up all of these authors and works is to show how much support there was for authorship of mechanical arts that was either dedicated to or sponsored by heads of state or military leaders. To bolster her argument that these texts elevated the status of the practitioners of mechanical arts, she also points to many references in the works to ancient traditions or sources. Among these are Kyeser’s portrayal of Alexander the Great, Taccola’s image of Archimedes, and Ghiberti’s reference of Athenaios Mechanicos.
Long may have a preconception that the geographical area she focuses on is particularly unique. This may be the case, but she does not spend any ink justifying her focus on southern Germany and northern Italy. It is not clear what was going on in other prosperous areas in Europe, such as Spain, France, and England. Another preconception is that she does not support her decision to start in the fifteenth century.
Long’s paper is a response to at least five different currents in the history of science. First, she hopes to modify Eisenstein’s thesis that the printing press was the most important causal agent in the resurgence of technical literature during the early modern period. If Long is correct, then there was considerable momentum before the printing press. Second, she responds to the contemporary historiography for this period, as her thesis would elevate the role of the artisanal influence on early modern science, thus supporting Zilsel’s thesis. She updates this thesis in two ways: drawing attention to the role of the author, and establishing that the artisan was not as separate from learned and elite circles as Zilsel believed. Third, she targets historians such as Shapin and Biagioli who argue that the experimental philosophers of the seventeenth century dissociated themselves from practitioners of the mechanical arts. Long joins a growing number of historians that envision a more complex scenario of interaction. Fourth, she addresses a question from Alan Gabbey: What is the conceptual history that transformed the mechanical arts from artificial human construction produced in opposition to nature (the traditional view) to the science of mechanics as a branch of physics devoted to the study of certain aspects of nature? [2, p. 3]. Finally, she addresses the traditional scholarship on Alberti that holds him to be furthering the role of mathematical proportion, and that tends to disregard his interests in the mechanical arts.
Long suggests at least two open avenues of research. First, she says that “more study is needed of the many further manuscript treatises on weaponry and other kinds of machines and devices that proliferated in the fifteenth-century German empire” [2, p. 19]. Second, she concedes that properly defending her claim about the appropriation of these texts by learned culture in the sixteenth century is outside the scope of the paper [2, p. 40].
The main point to take away from this article is that there is a particularly interesting relationship between the political turmoil of fifteenth century Germany and Italy and the rise of mechanical arts. Long has provided much evidence for this relationship. My own task will be to answer three difficult questions related to this article: why this particular geographical area, why the fifteenth century and not the fourteenth or thirteenth, and how were the texts by these authors appropriated in the subsequent centuries.
Bennett’s article, although not as well organized or argued as Long’s, succeeds in its goal of showing how curators, and particularly the study of instruments from the sixteenth century, can aid historians in their task of understanding the past. His thesis is that the theoric offers a better understanding of Gilbert’s position on the motion of the Earth. The reason this paper is not well organized is that, unlike Long, who circumscribes her domain of inquiry to fit well enough within the confines of a single article, Bennett sets out with a lofty goal, and then takes a circuitous path to a discussion of the theoric and its relationship to Gilbert’s De magnete. By looking at instruments and maps, he also wishes to establish the practical bent of those who used these tools, as having the goal merely to provide “answers to problems” rather than “insight into the nature of things” [1, p. 143]. This is a lofty claim for a paper of some twenty pages. It reads as if it were two (or three) articles in one.
The first part of his article looks at a series of sixteenth century instruments, including the globe, radio latino, and astrolabe, and shows that their purpose was to be useful mathematical tools, rather than representations of physical reality. For instance, he notes that there are globes from this period that rotate along the poles, but argues that this was done by the manufacturers of the globe simply for convenience. The radio latino was a surveying tool that was shaped so that it could fit in a scabbard. Bennett also provides examples of astrolabes that use specific projections of the celestial sphere in order to simplify the instrument’s construction. To support the view of these instruments as useful mathematical tools, he quotes the instrument designer Gemma Frisius: “we can do by geometrical invention what is not permitted in the natural world.”
The prime example for Bennett is the theoric. He says “the vehicle that encapsulates the relationship between mathematics and the material world, and the work that practical mathematicians do there, is characteristically the theoric” [1, p. 143]. His main objective here is to show that Gilbert used a theoric to relate dip to latitude, did not give “a very detailed physical account” of his use, but nevertheless developed a natural philosophy that partially relied upon the theoric as a mathematical tool [1, p. 145]. As I have not read the De magnete yet, I am not all that convinced yet of what Bennett is trying to show with this example. He also does not explain how a curator, in particular, can shed more light on his use of the theoric here than a historian of science.
As far as new ideas or avenues of research that this paper opens up, I am fascinated by the idea of an instrumental turn in historical writing, and the possibility for more cross-disciplinary work between curators and historians. It is also an interest of mine to expand this idea, especially now after the pace of scientific expansion of the 20th century, to interview living instrument designers today, who may not necessarily write about their craft, in order to better understand the thought processes of these designers in a way that we might apply back to the early modern period. I would also like to learn more about companies or corporations that have had a legacy in the field of mathematical instrumentation. His call to historians is to take instruments into consideration, and his example of Gilbert is supposed to show that much can be accomplished by doing so. Although the Gilbert example confused me, I’ve been convinced by Bennett’s article that a historian of science and technology must consider the practice alongside the text.
References
[1] Jim Bennett. Knowing and doing in the sixteenth century: what were instruments for? The British Journal for the History of Science, 36(2):129–150, 2003.
[2] Pamela O. Long. Power, patronage, and the authorship of ars: From mechanical know-how to mechanical knowledge in the last scribal age. Isis, 88(1):1–41, 1997.
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