Instruments and the Imagination

Description

Thomas Hankins and Robert Silverman investigate an array of instruments from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century that seem at first to be marginal to science--magnetic clocks that were said to operate by the movements of sunflower seeds, magic lanterns, ocular harpsichords (machines that played different colored lights in harmonious mixt

"[A] surprising and instructive book... A salutary perspective on a tale that is usually told very differently."--A. C. Grayling, Financial Times "Hankins and Silverman illuminate not only the tools of science, but the changing character of the enterprise itself."--Stephen Johnston, New Scientist "This imaginative and intellectually stimulating book reminds us that artifacts have an intellectual context, as well as a social one, and that a thick vein of the irrational runs through all of technology."--George Basalla, Technology and Culture "Thomas Hankins and Robert Silverman provide a welcome contribution... Their avowed intention ... [is] to look at instruments on the margins ... to show the significance of such instruments to the history of science. By making instruments a starting point for historical inquiry, [they] illuminate not only the tools of science, but the changing character of the enterprise itself."--Stephen Johnston, New Scientist