Nuncius Series12- Instruments of Knowledge

Jean-Francois Gauvin

• 26 juni 2023
• 9789004504608

Samenvatting:

Instruments of Knowledge looks sequentially at instruments, habits, and museums to uncover how material and intellectual activities, rules, and commitments form one meaningful and credible blueprint revealing the building blocks of early modern knowledge production and its contemporary representation in cultural institutions.



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.