Ingenuity in the making: matter and technique in early modern Europe

Uittreksel

"Ingenuity in the Making explores the myriad ways in which ingenuity shaped the experience and conceptualization of materials and their manipulation in early modern Europe. Contributions range widely across the arts and sciences, examining objects and texts, professions and performances, concepts and practices. The book considers subjects such as spirited matter, the conceits of nature, and crafty devices, investigating the ways in which ingenuity acted in and upon the material world through skill and technique. Contributors ask how ingenuity informed the "maker's knowledge" tradition, where the perilous borderline between the genius of invention and disingenuous fraud was drawn, charting the ambitions of material ingenuity in a rapidly globalizing world."-- Publisher's website.

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Introduction / Richard J. Oosterhoff -- Part I: The natures of matter. Spirited Matter and Ingenious Nature: Accounting for Alchemical Change / Jennifer M. Rampling ; Deceiving the Senses: The Role of Vapors in Francis Bacon's Natural Philosophy / Doina-Cristina Rusu ; Robert Boyle's Restless Gems / Michael Bycroft ; Handsteine: The Generative Powers of a Mineral Artifact / Andrés Vélez-Posada -- Part II: Bodies, labor, and technique. Ingenuity, Sweat, and Bloodsour Work in Sixteenth-Century Mining Literature / Tina Asmussen ; Calligraphy and Metamorphosis: Invention and Imitation in a Sixteenth-Century Craft / Hannah Murphy ; Ingeniosa peritia: The Languages of Ingenuity in Italian Renaissance Anatomy / Viktoria von Hoffmann ; The Contested Ingenia of Early Modern Anatomy: Continuities and Conflicts in Medical Training at Leiden University, 1592-1678 / Evan R. Ragland ; From Ingenuity to Genius and Technique: Shifting Concepts in Eighteenth-Century Theories of Art and Craft / Marieke M. A. Hendriksen -- Color plates follow page 142 -- Part III: Ingenious Monks and Their Machines: Trickery and Wonder in Sculptures with Movable Parts in Pre- and Reformation-Era Europe / Christina Neilson ; Ingenuity in the Garden: From the Poetics of Grafting to Divine Mathematics / Denis Ribouillault ; A Charlatan's Ingenuity: Juggling, Joking, and Medical Reform in Johann Ernst Burggrav's Lamp of Life and Death / Vera Keller ; New World Feathers and the Matter of Early Modern Ingenuity: Digital Microscopes, Period Hands, and Period Eyes / Stefan Hanß ; Unpacking Foreign Ingenuity: The German Conquest of Artful Objects with "Indian" Provenance / Anna Grasskamp.