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Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science
Lorraine Daston (Ed.)
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Description for Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science
Paperback. Essays examine nine intriguing objects made eloquent when matter and meaning converge. Editor(s): Daston, Lorraine J. Num Pages: 447 pages, 9 color illus., 82 b&w illus. BIC Classification: ABA. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 229 x 154 x 34. Weight in Grams: 712.
Essays examine nine intriguing objects made eloquent when matter and meaning converge. Imagine a world without things. There would be nothing to describe, nothing to explain, remark, interpret, or complain about. Without things, we would stop speaking; we would become as mute as things are alleged to be. In nine original essays, internationally renowned historians of art and of science seek to understand how objects become charged with significance without losing their gritty materiality. True to the particularity of things, each of the essays singles out one object for close attention: a Bosch drawing, the freestanding column, a Prussian island, soap bubbles, early photographs, glass flowers, Rorschach blots, newspaper clippings, paintings by Jackson Pollock. Each is revealed to be a node around which meanings accrete thickly. But not just any meanings: what these things are made of and how they are made shape what they can mean. Neither the pure texts of semiotics nor the brute objects of positivism, these things are saturated with cultural significance. Things become talkative when they fuse matter and meaning; they lapse into speechlessness when their matter and meanings no longer mesh. Each of the nine objects examined in this book had its historical moment, when the match of this thing to that thought seemed irresistible. At these junctures, certain things become objects of fascination, association, and endless consideration; they begin to talk. Things that talk fleetingly realize the dream of a perfect language, in which words and world merge. Essays Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison, Anke te Heesen, Caroline A. Jones, Joseph Leo Koerner, Antoine Picon, Simon Schaffer, Joel Snyder, and M. Norton and Elaine M. Wise. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone Books).
Product Details
Publisher
Zone Books United States
Number of pages
447
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2007
Condition
New
Weight
712g
Number of Pages
448
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9781890951443
SKU
V9781890951443
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-15
About Lorraine Daston (Ed.)
Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She is the coauthor (with Katharine Park) of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and (with Peter Galison) Objectivity and the editor of Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, all three published by Zone Books.
Reviews for Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science
This collection is a feast for students of art, modern Western history, and philosophy. Recommended for academic and university libraries. - This collection is a feast for students of art, modern Western history, and philosophy. Recommended for academic and university libraries... -Francisca Goldsmith, Library Journal, Library Journal