German Prince-Practitioners: Aspects in the Development of Courtly Science, Technology, and Procedures in the Renaissance

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Society for the History of Technology and The Johns Hopkins University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Technology and Culture.The expansion of mathematical and technical literature during the 15th and 16th centuries, often through the patronage of Italian princes and ecclesiastics,' is only one aspect of a many-sided relationship between European courts, technology, and science. A deeper understanding of aristocratic involvement in technology and science may be attained by developing a picture of a specific princely type-one who not only patronizes technical and mathematical projects, but who is himself a technical and mathematical practitioner. The study of prince-practitioners in Germany will serve to illustrate the function of several European courts as institutional nodes of technical activity. I suggest that such courts, by tailoring technical and scientific roles to the special projects of princes; by emphasizing the procedural values of technical precision, exact and critical observation and the organized collection of information; and by promoting collaborative efforts through informal routes of communication added aristocratic support and authority to the development of important features of the experimental approach to the study of nature.The influence of the court in the development of new technologies and in the creation of procedures useful to science has so far gained only peripheral attention. This discussion; while in no way attempting to limit the authority of Bacon's philosophy in the establishment of the experimental method nor favoring a particular explanation of the origin of Baconian principles, seeks at least to widen the social context

Connecting the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions: The Role of Practical Mathematics

“…However, an earlier impetus to mathematical practice came from princely courts in the fragmented states of Italy and Germany. In Italy, machine design, fortification, public buildings, and hydraulic projects (building canals, aqueducts, and draining land) engaged architect-engineers like Brunelleschi, Leonardo, and Taccola (Bennett 2006), while in Germany, where several princes were notable astronomers, an additional concern was improving state mines (Moran 1981). 26…”

Gilding Kepler’s cosmology

“…9 If Lehrbücher, for the late 16th-century university, were not integrated into the teaching curriculum and symbolized more than anything a tacit acknowledgement of the advancements that had been made in the production of an applied form of mathematics outside the university system, it was the court that was genuinely invested in appropriating mixed-mathematical knowledge and expertise. 10 After all, the practice of mixedmathematics, which included architecture, surveying, fortification and artillery design alongside the study of perspectival geometry, was an ever more essential component of courtly learning and the projection of power in an era in which sovereigns were increasingly consumed with the authority of geometrical measurement and consequently the tools and texts used for measuring. Inventory records at the Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart reveal that Duke Friedrich was no different from his counterparts in other German cities and had begun compiling a comprehensive library of mixed-mathematical literature from the moment he came into power in the early 1590s, an endeavor continued by his son and heir Duke Johann Friedrich of Württemberg (1582-1628).…”

De l'utilisation symbolique et idéologique de la science

“…Ces utilisations de la science par les gouvernements peuvent être quali, fiées d'instrumentales (Moran, 1981;Hahn, 1992). La science est utilisée comme instrument ou moyen permettant de produire des technologies spéci, fiques.…”