Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology (UC Berkeley)
And the History of Health Sciences Program (UCSF)
Simon Werrett
University of Washington
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Philosophical Fireworks - Configurations of Arts and Sciences in Early Modern Europe
Early modern fireworks fascinated audiences as exotic courtly spectacles of fiery effects, as dreadful incendiary weapons of war, as strange products of alchemy and magic, and as models of Nature and even God's operations. This paper uses the largely untold history of fireworks to reconsider the longstanding thesis that the sciences were revolutionized in the seventeenth century by the addition of empirical approaches to Nature drawn from artisanal crafts, an argument often associated with historians Edgar Zilsel, Paolo Rossi, and more recently Pamela H. Smith. Here I trace a series of interactions among the practitioners of pyrotechny, the art of making and displaying fireworks, with various forms of natural magical and philosophical enterprise between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Such a history suggests a continuous and reciprocal exchange among artisans and scholars, taking a diversity of forms depending on historical circumstances and the locations where artisans and philosophers met. The paper thus offers a geography, as well as history, of the artisanry-science relationship.
4:00PM
Monday, April 23, 2007
140 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley
Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: ohst@berkeley.edu
