Engines of the imagination : Renaissance culture and the rise of the machine / Jonathan Sawday
| Signatura | Copia | Colección |
|---|---|---|
| 43/63 | 7168 | Libros modernos desde 1900 |
At what point did machines and technology begin to have an impact on the cultural consciousness and imagination of Europe? How was this reflected through the art and literature of the time? Was technology a sign of the fall of humanity from its original state of innocence or a sign of human progress and mastery over the natural world? In his characteristically lucid and captivating style, Jonathan Sawday investigates these questions and more by engaging with the poetry, philosophy, art, and engineering of the period to find the lost world of the machine in the pre-industrial culture of the European Renaissance. \r\nThe aesthetic and intellectual dimension of these machines appealed to familiar figures such as Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Montaigne, and Leonardo da Vinci as well as to a host of lesser known writers and artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This intellectual engagement with machines in the European Renaissance gave rise to new attitudes towards gender, work and labour, and even fostered the new sciences of artificial life and reason which would be pursued by figures such as Descartes, Hobbes, and Leibniz in the seventeenth century. \r\nWriters, philosophers and artists had mixed and often conflicting reactions to technology, reflecting a paradoxical attitude between modern progress and traditional values. Underpinning the enthusiastic creation of a machine-driven world, then, were stories of loss and catastrophe. These contradictory attitudes are part of the legacy of the European Renaissance, just as much as the plays of Shakespeare or the poetry of John Milton. And this historical legacy helps to explain many of our own attitudes towards the technology that surrounds us, sustains us, and sometimes perplexes us in the modern world
List of illustrations
Preface and acknowledgements
1. The Renaissance machine and its discontents
The world of Techne
A word run upon wheels: the sound of Renaissance
Windmills and Watermills
Shame
2. Philosophy, power, and politics in Renaissance technology
The vital humour of the terrestrial machine
A water-driven world
Watching machines with Montaigne
Movement and the philosophy of machines
Machines and social power
The Renaissance megamachine: Rome 1585-6
3. The turn of the screw: machines, books, and bodies
Of alientation and pins
What is't o'clock?: clock time and social status
Print and mechanical culture
The birth of the Renaissance machine
Gregorius Agricola and the invention of mechanical labour
The syntax of the machine
The mechanical world of Agostino Ramelli
The body of the machine
Texual engines
Perpetual motions
4. Women and wheels: gender and the machine in the Renaissance
Rosie the Riveter
The Spinners
Wheels
Rotary punishment
The wheel of Fortune
A thing made for Alexander
5. Nature wrought: artifice, illusion, and magical mechanics
Metallic fantasies
Fabricating nature
Mechanical illusions
Bodies without souls
Mechanical Women
6. Reasoning Engines: the instrumental imagination in the seventeenth century
Buying an instrument
Francis Bacon and the reform of mechanism
Seeing with machines
Robert Hooke's artificial bodies
The second Adam
Clockwork reason
The caclulating machine
Mechanical theology
Political machines
Sex machines
7. Milton and the engine
Mechanical language
Mechanical sight
The semi-omnipotent engine
The idea of the engine
Milton and industry
Milton and the machine
8. The machine stops
The interrupted idyll of Andrew Marvell
The happy return
Conclusion: the machine stops
Notes
Index.
Bibliografía: p. [319]-383) e índice
| Localización permanente | Código de barras | Signatura | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fundación Juanelo Turriano | 7168 | 43/63 |
At what point did machines and technology begin to have an impact on the cultural consciousness and imagination of Europe? How was this reflected through the art and literature of the time? Was technology a sign of the fall of humanity from its original state of innocence or a sign of human progress and mastery over the natural world? In his characteristically lucid and captivating style, Jonathan Sawday investigates these questions and more by engaging with the poetry, philosophy, art, and engineering of the period to find the lost world of the machine in the pre-industrial culture of the European Renaissance. \r\nThe aesthetic and intellectual dimension of these machines appealed to familiar figures such as Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Montaigne, and Leonardo da Vinci as well as to a host of lesser known writers and artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This intellectual engagement with machines in the European Renaissance gave rise to new attitudes towards gender, work and labour, and even fostered the new sciences of artificial life and reason which would be pursued by figures such as Descartes, Hobbes, and Leibniz in the seventeenth century. \r\nWriters, philosophers and artists had mixed and often conflicting reactions to technology, reflecting a paradoxical attitude between modern progress and traditional values. Underpinning the enthusiastic creation of a machine-driven world, then, were stories of loss and catastrophe. These contradictory attitudes are part of the legacy of the European Renaissance, just as much as the plays of Shakespeare or the poetry of John Milton. And this historical legacy helps to explain many of our own attitudes towards the technology that surrounds us, sustains us, and sometimes perplexes us in the modern world
List of illustrations
Preface and acknowledgements
1. The Renaissance machine and its discontents
The world of Techne
A word run upon wheels: the sound of Renaissance
Windmills and Watermills
Shame
2. Philosophy, power, and politics in Renaissance technology
The vital humour of the terrestrial machine
A water-driven world
Watching machines with Montaigne
Movement and the philosophy of machines
Machines and social power
The Renaissance megamachine: Rome 1585-6
3. The turn of the screw: machines, books, and bodies
Of alientation and pins
What is't o'clock?: clock time and social status
Print and mechanical culture
The birth of the Renaissance machine
Gregorius Agricola and the invention of mechanical labour
The syntax of the machine
The mechanical world of Agostino Ramelli
The body of the machine
Texual engines
Perpetual motions
4. Women and wheels: gender and the machine in the Renaissance
Rosie the Riveter
The Spinners
Wheels
Rotary punishment
The wheel of Fortune
A thing made for Alexander
5. Nature wrought: artifice, illusion, and magical mechanics
Metallic fantasies
Fabricating nature
Mechanical illusions
Bodies without souls
Mechanical Women
6. Reasoning Engines: the instrumental imagination in the seventeenth century
Buying an instrument
Francis Bacon and the reform of mechanism
Seeing with machines
Robert Hooke's artificial bodies
The second Adam
Clockwork reason
The caclulating machine
Mechanical theology
Political machines
Sex machines
7. Milton and the engine
Mechanical language
Mechanical sight
The semi-omnipotent engine
The idea of the engine
Milton and industry
Milton and the machine
8. The machine stops
The interrupted idyll of Andrew Marvell
The happy return
Conclusion: the machine stops
Notes
Index.
Bibliografía: p. [319]-383) e índice
