1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910456789103321

Titolo

History of technology . Volume twenty-nine, 2009 / / edited by Ian Inkster

Pubbl/distr/stampa

[London] : , : Bloomsbury Academic, , 2009

ISBN

1-350-01912-7

1-283-24587-6

9786613245878

1-4411-7708-6

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (230 p.)

Collana

History of technology

Disciplina

609

Soggetti

Technology - History

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

'Introduction to volume 29' / Ian Inkster. Special Issue: Kent Deng and Jerry Liu ed., Chinese Technological History: The Great Divergence -- 'Editorial Introduction' / Deng and Liu -- 'The Needham Question Updated: a Historiographical Survey and Elaboration' / Patrick K. O'Brien -- 'Cultural Logics for the Regime of Useful Knowledge during the Ming and early Qing China c. 1400-1700' / Jerry C.Y. Liu -- 'China and Science on the Eve of the 'Great Divergence' 1600-1800: A review of recent revisionist scholarship in Western languages' / Harriet T. Zurndorfer -- 'Movers and Shakers of Knowledge in China during the Ming-Qing Period' / Kent Deng.

Special Issue : Lissa Roberts and Ian Inkster ed., Mindful Hand. 'Introduction' / Lissa Roberts -- 'From darkness into light: The transformation of rock crystal into an object of adornment and revelation' / Alette Fleischer -- 'The Mindful Hands of Peasants: Construction of an Eight-Lock Staircase at Fonseranes, 1678-1679' / Chandra Mukerji -- 'Enlightenment in Russian Hands: Instruments, Inventions, and Ivan Petrovich Kulibin in Eighteenth-Century St. Petersburg' / Simon Werrett -- 'The mindful hand goes to Japan. Dutch-Japanese trade in the second half of the eighteenth century' /



Lissa Roberts -- 'Conclusions' / Ian Inkster.

Sommario/riassunto

"The common question from the western point of view is of the sort; why did China lose its early leadership of productive technologies to Europe during the early modern period? Answers to this seemingly clear enquiry vary from general cultural inwardness to the interferences of imperial governance. This collection surveys such theories but alters the issue by raising the notion that Chinese technologies did not so much fail as move along a path different from that of Europe. Our second collection on the Mindful Hand, also shifts common ground by querying and modifying common views of the links between knowledge and technique in early-modern European development. Scientific or related knowledge was not brought to technique as a socio-cultural gift from an educated elite to the working man. Rather, educated gents, practitioners, instrument makers, craftsfolk and technicians of all kinds intermingled both socially and in terms of the recognition of technical problems as well as in the assemblage of the mental, commercial and cognitive resources required to pursue innovative production projects."--Bloomsbury Publishing.