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About this book
The first book-length history of gems in early modern science offers a thought-provoking new take on the Scientific Revolution.
In Gems and the New Science, Michael Bycroft argues that gems were connected to major developments in the "new science" between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. As he explains, precious and semi-precious stones were at the centre of dramatic shifts in natural knowledge in early modern Europe. They were used to investigate luminescence, electricity, combustion, chemical composition, and more. They were collected by naturalists, measured by mathematicians, and rubbed, burned, and dissolved by experimental philosophers. This led to the demise of the traditional way of classifying gems – which grouped them by transparency, colour, and locality – and a turn to density, refraction, chemistry, and crystallography as more reliable guides for sorting these substances.
The science of gems shows that material evaluation was as important as material production in the history of science. It also shows the value of seeing science as the product of the interaction between different material worlds. The book begins by bringing these insights to bear on five themes of the Scientific Revolution. Each of the subsequent chapters deals with a major episode in early modern science, from the expansion of natural history in the sixteenth century to the emergence of applied science early in the nineteenth century. This important work is not only the first book-length history of the science of gems but also a fresh interpretation of the Scientific Revolution and an argument for a new form of materialism about science.
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Note on Terminology
Introduction
Gems
Matter
Value
The Scientific Revolution
Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution
Seven New Sciences
Alternative Histories of Gem Science
1. Gem Classification and Renaissance Natural History
From Luxuries to Virtues
Trade and the Orient
Tools and Hardness
Oriental Hardness
Classification Without Systematics
2. Gem Appraisal and Technical Literature in the Age of Louis XIV
Manuals
Inventories
Travel Narratives
Maps
Letters
The Mutual Influence of the Crafts
3. Gem Collecting and Experimental Philosophy
A Virtual Collection
The Jewel House
Strange Proofs
Trials of Goodness
4. Gems and the French Origins of Experimental Physics
Material-Driven Experimentation
Assaying Gems
Physics as Gem Collecting
Electricity as a Science of Materials
The Varieties of Matter
5. Precision and Preciousness in Enlightenment Mineralogy
From Lapidaries to Mineralogies
Color and Nuance
Refraction and Structure
Density and Variety
Crystals and Correlation
Gems and the Quantifying Spirit
6. Gems, the Crafts, and Chemical Composition
Metals and Porcelain
Diamond and Porcelain
Drugs and Glass
Gems and Metals
Compositionism About What?
7. The End of Gems and the Origins of Gemology
Books
Collections
Tests
Expertise
Value-Free Evaluation
Conclusion
A Brief History of Garnet
From Materialism to Transmaterialism
From Production to Evaluation
Gems Beyond the Scientific Revolution
Acknowledgments
Appendix 1. Diamonds Used in the Argument of Boyle’s Gems
Appendix 2. Gem Specimens from the Regent’s Survey, 1714–1719
Appendix 3. Gems in Dufay’s Experiments
Appendix 4. Comparative Table of Enlightenment Gem Taxonomies
Appendix 5. Refraction Data from Buffon and Rochon
Bibliography
Index
Customer Reviews
Biography
Michael Bycroft is associate professor in the history of science and technology at the University of Warwick. He is the coeditor of Gems in the Early Modern World: Materials, Knowledge, and Global Trade, 1450-1800.
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By: Michael Bycroft(Author)
336 pages, 10 colour & 35 b/w photos, 8 tables
"In his comprehensive and magisterial account, Bycroft offers a powerful argument that gems were at the heart of the development of modern science. Gems and the New Science persuasively shows how precious stones spurred the comparative analysis and evaluative judgment of materials, facilitating the cooperation of different artisanal communities of expertise in the process. Revising current interpretations of materialism, this incisive book offers a bold and ingenious theoretical intervention into debates about the production and evaluation of knowledge claims in the Scientific Revolution."
– Daniel Margocsy, author of Commercial Visions: Science, Trade, and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age
"Gems – sparking, brilliant, and colorful – were central to the early modern world. Training his eye on gem cutters, merchants, chemists, and experimental philosophers, Bycroft shows how their hands and minds interacted to shape the science of gems in Europe between 1500 and 1800. As brilliant and multifaceted as the gems, Bycroft's book uses the category of gems to show that science is always as much about evaluation as it is about production and that science remains only one way of judging value among many."
– Sven Dupre, coeditor of Gems in the Early Modern World: Materials, Knowledge, and Global Trade, 1450-1800
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