Prof. Dr. Sven Dupré (Berlin): Doing it Wrong.
Kunckel's Translation of Artisanal Knowledge.
08.11.2013 um 18:00 Uhr
There is a long history of writing about technology reaching back to Antiquity. Typically, these writings took the form of recipes. Less attention has been given to the readers of such recipes. Who were they? And did they try out recipes? In this paper I argue that an important evolution in writing about technology was the codification of error. Seemingly new in the seventeenth century is the process of writing how-to followed by the explicit signal that a recipe does not work and suggestions for ways to change it to make it work. In short, this paper is interested in how writing about technology came to reflect the process of reading. It approaches this issue by looking at the translation which the alchemist Johannes Kunckel made of Antonio Neri’s „L’arte vetraria“ in 1679.
Zeit: Friday, Nov. 08, 2013; 6-8 p.m.
Ort: room K201 (Historicum/ LMU)