The interlopers : early Stuart Projects and the undisciplining of knowledge / Vera Keller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Keller, Vera, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Science.

Technology--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Technology.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--History--Stuarts, 1603-1714.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--17th century.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (369 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, Maryland : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2023]

Summary:

"A reframing of how scientific knowledge was produced in the early modern world. Many accounts of the scientific revolution portray it as a time when scientists disciplined knowledge by first disciplining their own behavior. According to these views, scientists such as Francis Bacon produced certain knowledge by pacifying their emotions and concentrating on method. In The Interlopers, Vera Keller rejects this emphasis on discipline and instead argues that what distinguished early modernity was a navigation away from restraint and toward the violent blending of knowledge from across society and around the globe. Keller follows early seventeenth-century English "projectors" as they traversed the world, pursuing outrageous entrepreneurial schemes along the way. These interlopers were developing a different culture of knowledge, one that aimed to take advantage of the disorder created by the rise of science and technological advances. They sought to deploy the first submarine in the Indian Ocean, raise silkworms in Virginia, and establish the English slave trade. These projectors developed a culture of extreme risk-taking, uniting global capitalism with martial values of violent conquest. They saw the world as a riskscape of empty spaces, disposable people, and unlimited resources. By analyzing the disasters-as well as a few successes-of the interlopers she studies, Keller offers a new interpretation of the nature of early modern knowledge itself. While many influential accounts of the period characterize European modernity as a disciplining or civilizing process, The Interlopers argues that early modernity instead entailed a great undisciplining that entangled capitalism, colonialism, and science"-- Provided by publisher.

"According to a standard, long-running account of the rise of science, the "scientific revolution" brought about by genius figures like Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton was a revolution in thought. It was the result of a disciplining of thought that opened the mind to the order and patterns in nature. Much of the scholarly pushback against this story focuses on expanding the cast of characters beyond the geniuses to include artisans, craftsmen, medical practitioners, sailors, tradesmen and other non-elites who contributed to the development of the scientific mindset. The author rejects the emphasis on cognitive orderliness and discipline that the standard account and its detractors share"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

The political economy of projects

Cast of characters

"Projectors are commonly the best naturalists" : knowledge practices

Statecraft : "swimming between two waters" in global policy

Transplanters of empire : forcing nature and labor

Active knowledge : a turn against the liberal arts

Unlimited invention.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Keller, Vera The Interlopers

ISBN:

9781421445939