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2 books match the query 'Tresch, John'
The Romantic Machine
Utopian Science and Technology after NapoleonJohn Tresch
University of Chicago Press, 2012
In the years immediately following Napoleon’s defeat, French thinkers in all fields set their minds to the problem of how to recover from the long upheavals that had been set into motion by the French Revolution. Many challenged the Enlightenment’s emphasis on mechanics and questioned the rising power of machines, seeking a return to the organic unity of an earlier age and triggering the artistic and philosophical movement of romanticism. Previous scholars have viewed romanticism and industrialization in opposition, but in this groundbreaking volume John Tresch reveals how thoroughly entwined science and the arts were in early nineteenth-century France and how they worked together to unite a fractured society.
Focusing on a set of celebrated technologies, including steam engines, electromagnetic and geophysical instruments, early photography, and mass-scale printing, Tresch looks at how new conceptions of energy, instrumentality, and association fueled such diverse developments as fantastic literature, popular astronomy, grand opera, positivism, utopian socialism, and the Revolution of 1848. He shows that those who attempted to fuse organicism and mechanism in various ways, including Alexander von Humboldt and Auguste Comte, charted a road not taken that resonates today.
Essential reading for historians of science, intellectual and cultural historians of Europe, and literary and art historians, The Romantic Machine is poised to profoundly alter our understanding of the scientific and cultural landscape of the early nineteenth century.
Working Knowledge
A Simon Schaffer ReaderSimon Schaffer
University of Chicago Press, 2026
Working Knowledge is the first English-language collection of essays by Simon Schaffer, coauthor of Leviathan and the Air-Pump, a landmark text in the history of science. Though the latter may be his most famous book, Schaffer is also renowned for seminal articles on Isaac Newton and the cultures of popular spectacle, nineteenth-century physics and its practices of labor discipline and standardization, the history of anthropology and collecting, and the globe-spanning cultural interactions that have shaped modern science. Working Knowledge compiles these well-known pieces alongside newer selections, making them accessible in a single place and representing the huge scope and impact of Schaffer’s oeuvre.
The Reader divides sixteen of Schaffer’s articles across five thematic sections, which take up timely issues like the turn toward global histories of science; the intersection of science and capitalism; the interaction between bodies and machines; and the connection between science, politics, and the environment. Eight new essays by notable historians such as Adrian Johns, Lissa Roberts, and Steven Shapin bring Schaffer’s pieces into discussion with current scholarship. Illustrations and brief commentaries by Schaffer and the artist Adam Lowe, a longtime collaborator, are included throughout the volume.
Bringing together essential articles that were previously scattered across several publications, Working Knowledge is an insightful introduction to Schaffer and his ever-relevant writing.