Working Knowledge

Simon Schaffer, fellow of the British Academy and professor of history and philosophy of Science at Cambridge University since 1985, is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books, among them, with Steven Shapin, the classic Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Boyle, Hobbes, and the Experimental Life. Schaffer’s work has been awarded the Erasmus Prize, the George Sarton Medal from the History of Science Society, the Dan David Prize, the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum, and the Paul Bunge Award from the German Chemical Society. Charlotte Bigg is a research fellow at the Centre Alexandre Koyré and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. John Tresch is professor in the history of art, science, and folk practice at The Warburg Institute at the University of London. Simon Werrett is professor of the history of science at the University College London.

• Editors’ Preface, by Charlotte Bigg, John Tresch, and Simon WerrettPart 1. OpeningIn Conversation: Simon Schaffer and the Politics of Intellectual Inquiry, by Lissa RobertsPart 2. PerformanceScience Performed: The Priestley Principle, by Frédérique Aït-Touati and Adrian JohnsNatural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in the Eighteenth CenturyGlass Works: Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of ExperimentEasily Cracked: Scientific Instruments in States of DisrepairPart 3. CapitalismOpening Marxism’s Black Box, by Jenny Bulstrode, Myles W. Jackson, Dániel Margócsy, and Kapil RajNewton at the CrossroadsLate Victorian Metrology and Its Instrumentation: A Manufactory of OhmsGolden Means: Assay Instruments and the Geography of Precision in the Guinea TradeInstruments as Cargo in the China TradePart 4. Bodies/MachinesWhere Bodies Meet Machines, by Iwan Rhys Morus and H. Otto SibumAstronomers Mark Time: Discipline and the Personal EquationSelf EvidenceEnlightened AutomataPart 5. CosmologyCosmology as Science and Culture, by Jan Golinski, Stéphane Van Damme, Michael Bravo, and Lauren KassellHerschel in Bedlam: Natural History and Stellar AstronomyNewton on the Beach: The Information Order of Principia MathematicaThe World as AnimalPart 6. TravelThe Reflexive Encounter Between Metrology and Orientalism, by James Delbourgo, Samaa Elimam, Rohan Deb Roy, and Richard StaleyFrom Physics to Anthropology and Back AgainThe Asiatic Enlightenments of British AstronomyOriental Metrology and the Politics of Antiquity in Nineteenth-Century Survey SciencesPart 7. ConclusionTaking the Measure, by Steven ShapinArchives ConsultedBibliographyContributorsIndex

“If you were looking for a guide to the most influential work in the history of science in the past forty years, written by one of its most brilliant and original thinkers, this expertly edited volume of Schaffer’s collected essays should be top of your list. Even on second or third reading, every essay is still powerful and provocative—a master class in how to rethink a whole discipline.”