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Article ID: CBB719121642

Grasping the Body: Physicians, Tailors, and Holy People (April 2021)

Technology and Culture
Volume: 62
Issue: 2
Pages: 467-493

DOI: 10.1353/tech.2021.0057

URI: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/794373

Publication Date: April 2021
Edition Details: Special Issue: Technology Is Global: The Useful and Reliable Knowledge Debate
Language: English

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Physicians; doctors History of medicine, as a discipline Tailor Knowledge and learning Material culture History of science, as a discipline History of technology, as a discipline Christianity and culture Useful knowledge Technology Measurement Early modern England

This article argues for the importance of material practices and the agency of objects in forming and validating knowledge in early modern Britain. They played a crucial role in the development of technological and scientific culture, as part of a process of appropriation of knowledge, skills, and methods from artisans. Despite this importance, they have so far been largely overlooked. Moreover, this article demonstrates how the belief that "scientific" observations could be communicated reliably and certified through specific objects was rooted in religious and mythicized practices. It discusses the mid-seventeenth-century case of the provincial physician William Durston. To prove his knowledge was reliable, he submitted the tapes used to measure his patients together with witness accounts to the Royal Society in London. This article adds to current debates around Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Europe and shows how different kinds of knowledge and actors shaped the Western path to "modernity."

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Article Dagmar Schäfer; Simona Valeriani (April 2021) Technology Is Global: The Useful & Reliable Knowledge Debate. Technology and Culture (pp. 327-347). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB719121642/

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