Overview
Essays examine nine intriguing objects made eloquent when matter and meaning converge.Imagine a world without things. There would be nothing to describe, nothing to explain, remark, interpret, or complain about. Without things, we would stop speaking; we would become as mute as things are alleged to be. In nine original essays, internationally renowned historians of art and of science seek to understand how objects become charged with significance without losing their gritty materiality. True to the particularity of things, each of the essays singles out one object for close attention: a Bosch drawing, the freestanding column, a Prussian island, soap bubbles, early photographs, glass flowers, Rorschach blots, newspaper clippings, paintings by Jackson Pollock. Each is revealed to be a node around which meanings accrete thickly. But not just any meanings: what these things are made of and how they are made shape what they can mean. Neither the pure texts of semiotics nor the brute objects of positivism, these things are saturated with cultural significance. Things become talkative when they fuse matter and meaning; they lapse into speechlessness when their matter and meanings no longer mesh. Each of the nine objects examined in this book had its historical moment, when the match of this thing to that thought seemed irresistible. At these junctures, certain things become objects of fascination, association, and endless consideration; they begin to talk. Things that talk fleetingly realize the dream of a perfect language, in which words and world merge.Essays Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison, Anke te Heesen, Caroline A. Jones, Joseph Leo Koerner, Antoine Picon, Simon Schaffer, Joel Snyder, and M. Norton and Elaine M. Wise. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone Books).
Full Product Details
Author: Lorraine J. Daston (Max Planck Institute for History of Science)
Publisher: Zone Books
Imprint: Zone Books
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 3.20cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.726kg
ISBN: 9781890951443
ISBN 10: 1890951447
Pages: 448
Publication Date: 13 November 2007
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
This collection is a feast for students of art, modern Western history, and philosophy. Recommended for academic and university libraries. - This collection is a feast for students of art, modern Western history, and philosophy. Recommended for academic and university libraries... -Francisca Goldsmith, Library Journal, Library Journal
Dense with erudition and pleasingly light on its scholarly feet. Kirkus Reviews This collection is a feast for students of art, modern Western history, and philosophy. Recommended for academic and university libraries... Francisca Goldsmith Library Journal
What is fascinating in this collection is the diverse ways in which the authors, whose backgrounds and intellectual styles differ significantly, attempt to comprehend not just their fascination with certain objects but also to describe meaningfully the objects' widespread uses. Important, useful, beautiful things are in this sense things that matter. Things that matter have meaning. And meaningful things are things that talk. - Miguel Tamen, University of Lisbon
Author Information
Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and the editor of Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (both Zone Books).
