From Lived Experience to the Written Word

Pamela H. Smith is the Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University and founding director of the Center for Science and Society and of its cluster project, the Making and Knowing Project. She is the author of The Business of Alchemy and The Body of the Artisan, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press. She is the co-editor of Ways of Making and Knowing and The Matter of Art and editor of Entangled Itineraries.

• Introduction: Lived Experience and the Written WordPart 1: Vernacular Theorizing in Craft1. Is Handwork Knowledge?2. The Metalworker's Philosophy3. Thinking with LizardsPart 2: Writing Down Experience4. Artisan Authors5. Writing Kunst6. Recipes for KunstPart 3: Reading and Collecting7. Who Read and Used Little Books of Art?8. Kunst as Power: Making and CollectingPart 4: Making and Knowing9. Reconstructing Practical Knowledge: Hastening to Experience10. A Vocabulary for Mind-Body KnowingEpilogue: Global Routes of Practical KnowledgeAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex

"This book is a cogently original account of skilled practice, its expression in writing, and its significance for the culture of knowledge as the new sciences developed in early modern Europe. With roots in the world-renewed Making and Knowing Project, it offers an important addition to the histories of skilled craft practice, of science and technology, and of the premodern and early modern periods." -- Pamela O. Long, author of Engineering the Eternal City "This is a brilliant, groundbreaking, and timely book. Through a particularly novel and exciting approach, Smith offers the first book-length study on the way early modern practitioners wrote about their skills. It is a must read for the growing community of scholars interested in material culture and in the ways how bodies, minds, things, and materials interact with each other." -- Christine Goettler, author of Last Things