Science without Leisure : Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

KK, HARUN.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Turkey--Istanbul--History.

Science.

Naturalism.

naturalism (philosophical movement).

Istanbul (Turkey)--History--17th century.

Istanbul (Turkey).

Turkey--Istanbul.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (337 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2020]

Summary:

Science in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Istanbul, Harun Küçük argues, was without leisure, a phenomenon spurred by the hyperinflation a century earlier when scientific texts all but disappeared from the college curriculum and inflation reduced the wages of professors to one-tenth of what they were in the sixteenth century. It was during this tumultuous period that philosophy and theory, the more leisurely aspects of naturalism - and the pursuit of "knowledge for knowledge's sake" - vanished altogether from the city. But rather than put an end to science in Istanbul, this economic crisis was transformative, turning science into a practical matter, into something one learned through apprenticeship and provided as a service. In 'Science without Leisure', Küçük reveals how Ottoman science, when measured against familiar narratives of the Scientific Revolution, was remarkably far less scholastic and philosophical and far more cosmopolitan and practical. His book explains why as practical naturalists deployed natural knowledge to lucrative ends without regard for scientific theories, science in the Ottoman Empire over the long term ultimately became the domain of physicians, bureaucrats, and engineers rather than of scholars and philosophers.-- Source other than the Library of Congress.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Notes on naming conventions, translation, and transliteration

Introduction. After science : Ottoman practical naturalism

Chapter 1. Istanbul and her sciences

Chapter 2. Istanbul's medreses in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

Chapter 3. The Ottoman scholastic field and the sciences

Chapter 4. The calendar : Copernicus for tax collectors

Chapter 5. The recipe : An annotated chronology of new medicine in the seventeenth century

Chapter 6. Distinction : A social critique of scientific taste

Chapter 7. Like ants on a watermelon : Practical naturalists encounter philosophy

Chapter 8. Maritime, mercantile, sacred : Empiricism and the compass

Conclusion

Appendix 1. Extract from Tezkireci İbrahim, 'Secencelü'l-Eflak fi Gayeti'l-İdrak [Mirror of the Heavens at the Edge of Understanding] (1662)

Appendix 2. Extract from İbrahim Müteferrika, 'Füyuzat-ı Mıknatısiye [Magnetic Effluvia] (1732)

Appendix 3. Extract from İbrahim Müteferrika, Usülü'l-Hikem fi Nizamü'l-Ümem [Foundations of Government in Various Social Orders]

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822987109

0822987104

OCLC:

1131882051