Article ID: CBB231312398

Cooking Niter, Prototyping Nature: Saltpeter and Artisanal Experiment in Korea, 1592–1635 (2022)

unapi

From experimental philosophers in England to workshop managers in Korea, practitioners across the seventeenth-century world developed new ways of investigating nature while studying saltpeter (potassium nitrate), the chief ingredient of gunpowder. Contrary to global histories that emphasize circulation, however, this early modern convergence had less to do with the fluid movement of knowledge and technology than with the very moments when such movement failed. This essay argues that in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) the problem of adopting a Chinese method of manufacture—a “thing that did not work”—proved productive in unexpected ways. In the process of vetting the foreign knowledge, the Korean saltpeterers (artisans and military officers) discovered solutions that suited the local conditions. They also established a mode of experimentalism that used hands-on trials to investigate the natural world, drew on the artisanal techniques of “experiment” (sihŏm) and “prototyping” (kyŏnyang), and operated in two languages—the vernacular, hangŭl script and literary Sinitic.

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Authors & Contributors
Cressy, David
Haileigh Robertson
Wung Seok Cha
Washa, Quincy Marie
Sarah Grandin
O'Brien, Patrick
Concepts
Crafts and craftspeople
Gunpowder
Saltpeter
Manufacturing
Technology
Technology and culture
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
16th century
Early modern
Choson dynasty (Korea, 1392-1910)
19th century
Places
Korea
England
Europe
Spain
Portugal
China
Institutions
Royal Society of London
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