A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot

Citation

Vickery, B. (2002), "A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 58 No. 2, pp. 242-243. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd.2002.58.2.242.9

This book picks out a series of themes in the history of (primarily) European scholarly knowledge during the period covered (with some backward looks at classical and mediaeval writers, and some sideways glances at China and Japan), describing their social background and development. The main themes covered are: what types of scholar discovered, produced and disseminated knowledge; in what kinds of institution did they work; what were the main geographical centres of activity; what were the general ways of categorising knowledge; how was knowledge controlled by church and state; what was the role of the market; and how was knowledge acquired and used. The book is based on 40 years of study of both primary texts and secondary sources, reflected in the very rich bibliography.

Anyone interested in the history or communication of ideas will find much of value in these pages. I am not equipped to comment in detail, but in relation to scientific communication found many items to add to my understanding. This was particularly the case for the chapter on categorisation (“Classifying knowledge: curricula, libraries and encyclopaedias”), which Burke describes as “an anthropology of knowledge”. For example, an early illustration of the concept “tree of knowledge” was that of Ramon Lull’s Arbor Scientiae (c. 1300, printed in 1515), and Burke depicts a later instance in the Alchemia of Andreas Libavius, 1597. At about the same time, Christofle de Savigny expanded the tree form into a network in his tableau of “all the arts and sciences” (1587). In this chapter, as well as sections on curricula, libraries and encyclopaedias, Burke also looks at the arrangement of museums. In another chapter, he gives interesting examples of “the rise of the footnote” in the seventeenth century – more generally, of the habit of citing sources in scholarly literature.

The main text is preceded by a discussion of the sociology of knowledge, to which its social history can contribute. This gives the author an opportunity to note the existence of other forms of knowledge that he does not look at in detail – particularly craft knowledge. One nice example he cites is the Observations Diverses of the Parisian midwife Louise Bourgeois (1609), who says she is “the first woman of my trade who has taken pen in hand to describe the knowledge that God has given me”.

The book is a very welcome addition to our understanding of the intellectual life of the “early modern period”.