The history of science and the history of bureaucratic knowledge

Autor(en)

Sebastian Felten

Abstrakt

This article looks into mining in central Germany in the late eighteenth century as one area of highly charged exchange between (specific manifestations of early modern) science and the (early modern) state. It describes bureaucratic knowledge as socially distributed cognition by following the steps of a high-ranking official that led him to discover a rich silver ore deposit. Although this involved hybridization of practical/artisanal and theoretical/ scientific knowledge, and knowers, the focus of this article is on purification or boundary work that took place when actors in and around the mines consciously contributed to different circuits of knowledge production. For the sake of analysis, the article suggests a way of opposing bureaucratic versus scientific knowledge production, even when the sites, actors involved in, and practices of that knowledge production were the same or similar. Whereas the science of the time invoked consensus among equals to conflate competing knowledge claims, bureaucracies did so by applying a hierarchy among ranked individuals.

Organisation(en)

Externe Organisation(en)

Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Journal

History of Science

Band

56

Seiten

403-431

Anzahl der Seiten

29

ISSN

0073-2753

Publikationsdatum

12-2018

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

601008 Geschichtswissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

History, History and Philosophy of Science

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/cbdac924-b00e-457c-bf8c-80dd68cfd004