Artisanal Enlightenment
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Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France
Paola Bertucci
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A groundbreaking work that places the mechanical arts and the world of making at the heart of the Enlightenment
What would the Enlightenment look like from the perspective of artistes, the learned artisans with esprit, who presented themselves in contrast to philosophers, savants, and routine-bound craftsmen? Making a radical change of historical protagonists, Paola Bertucci places the mechanical arts and the world of making at the heart of the Enlightenment. At a time of great colonial, commercial, and imperial concerns, artistes planned encyclopedic projects and sought an official role in the administration of the French state. The Société des Arts, which they envisioned as a state institution that would foster France’s colonial and economic expansion, was the most ambitious expression of their collective aspirations.
Artisanal Enlightenment provides the first in-depth study of the Société, and demonstrates its legacy in scientific programs, academies, and the making of Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. Through insightful analysis of textual, visual, and material sources, Bertucci provides a groundbreaking perspective on the politics of writing on the mechanical arts and the development of key Enlightenment concepts such as improvement, utility, and progress.
What would the Enlightenment look like from the perspective of artistes, the learned artisans with esprit, who presented themselves in contrast to philosophers, savants, and routine-bound craftsmen? Making a radical change of historical protagonists, Paola Bertucci places the mechanical arts and the world of making at the heart of the Enlightenment. At a time of great colonial, commercial, and imperial concerns, artistes planned encyclopedic projects and sought an official role in the administration of the French state. The Société des Arts, which they envisioned as a state institution that would foster France’s colonial and economic expansion, was the most ambitious expression of their collective aspirations.
Artisanal Enlightenment provides the first in-depth study of the Société, and demonstrates its legacy in scientific programs, academies, and the making of Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. Through insightful analysis of textual, visual, and material sources, Bertucci provides a groundbreaking perspective on the politics of writing on the mechanical arts and the development of key Enlightenment concepts such as improvement, utility, and progress.
Paola Bertucci is associate professor of history at Yale University. She has published extensively on the public culture of science in eighteenth-century Europe, and is the author of prize-winning essays on secrecy, selective visibility, and industrial travel in the Enlightenment.
“Based on a fine-grained analysis of numerous unknown documents and uncharted episodes, this fascinating book addresses in a most original way the classical issue of the role of arts and trades in the French Enlightenment. It constitutes a major reconsideration of the origins of the Encyclopédie, and especially of its roots in the world of the crafts.”—Bruno Belhoste, Paris 1 University
"In this absorbing study of learned artisans in earlier eighteenth-century Paris, Paola Bertucci explores fundamental questions about technical innovation and the roles of theory and practice at a key moment in the emergence of the modern industrial state and the ideology of enlightenment."—Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge, co-author of Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
“A sophisticated investigation of the meaning and role of the mechanical arts in the French Enlightenment. This important and beautifully written study changes the focus and the direction of eighteenth-century scholarship in intellectual history and the history of science.”—Pamela O. Long, author of Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance
“Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Early Modern France excavates with lucidity and nuance the lost world of ambitious and self-aware artisan-artistes in the complex terrain of the arts and the sciences in Enlightenment France.”—Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University, author of The Body of the Artisan
“In this sophisticated exploration of Enlightenment debates on experiment and useful knowledge, Paola Bertucci finds artistes engaged with the French state and promotion of the public interest. Examining the Société des Arts, skilled craftsmen, and attitudes to mechanical practice she rescues the artisan from the disdain of the philosophes.”—Larry Stewart, author of The Rise of Public Science
“Based on deep and careful archival research, and written in remarkably clear prose, this fascinating book explores the relation of the sciences and the arts, or mind and hand, in eighteenth-century France.”—Mary Terrall, author of Catching Nature in the Act: Réaumur and the Practice of Natural History in the Eighteenth Century
“Artisanal Enlightenment is a must-read for historians of science, technology, and the Enlightenment”—Dena Goodman, author of The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment
“In exploring the evolution of artisanal and scientific milieus during the French Enlightenment, Paola Bertucci reveals a complex, layered world of knowledge production and skills in one of the capital cities of the European Enlightenment.”—Stéphane Van Damme, European University Institute
“A tour de force . . . [an] excellent study.”—Choice
“Really engaging…as a reader I was escorted from details of historical moments and biographies to the wider 18th-century social context in a seamless and delightful journey. These were masterfully woven into the book’s themes: workshops, practice and innovation.”—Elizabeth Haines, British Society for the History of Science
"Bertucci’s book is a must-read for all historians of early modern technology interested in the plurality of artisanal knowledge."—Sven Dupré, Technology & Culture
Selected as the winner of the 2018-2019 Louis Gottschalk Prize, sponsored by American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
A finalist for the Kenshur Prize, awarded for the best book on any eighteenth century topic relevant to a variety of disciplines, given by the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University- Bloomington.
Artisanal Enlightenment was shortlisted for the Pfizer Award given by the History of Science Society for an outstanding book in a three-year period in history of science
Artisanal Enlightenment was the second-prize winner of the 2018 Pickstone Prize from the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS), awarded for the best scholarly book in the history of science and medicine in English.
Winner of the Outstanding Academic Title for 2018 award sponsored by Choice
ISBN: 9780300227413
Publication Date: November 28, 2017
Publication Date: November 28, 2017
312 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
37 b/w illus.
37 b/w illus.
