1. ‘Scientific Knowledge, Enlightenment and Religion’

2. 2. Topics discussed in Term 1.
3. Useful Knowledge
Joel Mokyr – The Gifts of Athena (2002); The Enlightened Economy: an Economic History of Britain (2009)
2. Topics discussed in Term 1.

4. topics we covered in the first term on ‘Science, technology and war’.
‘useful knowledge’ and ‘tacit knowledge’ :
Mokyr and Epstein
how Europe interacted with Asia
Introduction

5. ‘great divergence’ and the knowledge revolution in the West, but not the East – a European industrial enlightenment
The role of skill and ‘tacit’ knowledge. What part did key groups of skilled and creative individuals who emerged in different places and times play?

6. Codified knowledge – technical manuals, encyclopedias, scientific societies
Bridges between ntellectuals and producers
Anonymous craftsmen and technicians

7. Tacit Knowledge
S.R. Epstein (Technology and Skills in the Pre-Modern East and the West (2014) (edited with Prak and van Zanden):

8. knowledge ‘moved in the flesh’.
role of wider economic forces – war, commercialization and urbanization
Shift of technological leadership from southern Europe to Northwest Europe over the early modern period.

9. Useful Knowledge and Asia
Questions:
Were eastern knowledge systems codified in scientific treatises, encyclopedias and manuals, or were there different traditions of codification?
Was there any parallel to that dialogues between ‘savants’ and ‘fabricants’ of Mokyr’s world
What happened in the Ottoman Empire or between the Mughal courts in India as whole communities of craftsmen were transferred by rulers? Were new conduits of knowledge opened, or did these communities remain enclaves?
Useful Knowledge and Asia

10. Dagmar Schäfer, The Crafting of 10,000 Things (2011) focusses on ‘practical knowledge transmission’, ‘embodied knowledge’, and ‘commonplace technologies’.
Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Modular and Mass Production in Chinese Art (2000) knowledge compiled in modular units
China:

11. older trajectory of ‘colonialism and science’
David Washbrook in ‘India in the Early Modern World Economy:
India

12. Chinese Porcelain Jingdezhen Transformation during early Qing period.
Dragon kilns and egg-shaped kilns
Division of labour and modular systems
Chinese Porcelain

13. Pere d’Entrecolle’s celebrated letters of 1712 and claimed 3000 furnaces. He recounted factories in ‘less frequented places of Ching-te-chen,’ ‘there live and work a large number of workers who each have their appointed task. One piece of porcelain, before it enters the door of the furnace passes through the hands of more than twenty people without any confusion…No doubt the Chinese have learned that the work is done faster this way.’ At a later point he added. ‘It is surprising to see with what speed these vessels pass through so many hands. It is said that one piece of fired porcelain passes through the hands of seventy workers.’

14. Role of scientific observers and technicians and artisans: aim to bring European technology and products to the Chinese, but also to learn more about their technologies.
 Emperor Qianlong’s response ‘We have never valued ingenious things’
Macartney Embassy

15. Macartney’s gifts; the Chinese response
Failure of the Embassy
British perceptions of China at the end of the eighteenth century