Book ID: CBB364186891

Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732 (2019)

unapi

Küçük, B. Harun (Author)


University of Pittsburgh Press


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: 324 pp.
Language: English

Science in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Istanbul, Harun Küçük argues, was without leisure, a phenomenon spurred by the hyperinflation a century earlier when scientific texts all but disappeared from the college curriculum and inflation reduced the wages of professors to one-tenth of what they were in the sixteenth century. It was during this tumultuous period that philosophy and theory, the more leisurely aspects of naturalism—and the pursuit of “knowledge for knowledge’s sake”—vanished altogether from the city. But rather than put an end to science in Istanbul, this economic crisis was transformative, turning science into a practical matter, into something one learned through apprenticeship and provided as a service. In Science without Leisure, Küçük reveals how Ottoman science, when measured against familiar narratives of the Scientific Revolution, was remarkably far less scholastic and philosophical and far more cosmopolitan and practical. His book explains why as practical naturalists deployed natural knowledge to lucrative ends without regard for scientific theories, science in the Ottoman Empire over the long term ultimately became the domain of physicians, bureaucrats, and engineers rather than of scholars and philosophers.

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Reviewed By

Review Avner Wishnitzer (2022) Review of "Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732". American Historical Review (pp. 2047-2048). unapi

Review Ovanes Akopyan (2021) Review of "Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732". Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 416-418). unapi

Review Peter Good (2020) Review of "Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 408-410). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB364186891/

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Authors & Contributors
Davids, Karel A.
Axon, Colin
Carrier, Martin
Cohen, Paul
Hård, Mikael
Hennig, Jochen
Journals
History of Technology
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences
British Journal for the History of Philosophy
French Historical Studies
Korean Journal of Medical History
Publishers
MIT Press
University of Toronto
Cambridge University Press
Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution & William Herschel Society
Böhlau Verlag
Reaktion Books
Concepts
Science and society
Urban history
Applied science
Physicians; doctors
Societies; institutions; academies
Technology
People
Descartes, René
La Hire, Philippe de
Herstal de la Tache, Michel
Knoblauch, Karl von
Andermüller, Bernhard Georg
Hudde, Johannes
Time Periods
18th century
17th century
19th century
20th century
16th century
Early modern
Places
Europe
France
Germany
Netherlands
London (England)
Istanbul (Turkey)
Institutions
Académie Royale des Sciences (France)
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