This introductory article provides an overview of the historiography of scientific secrecy from J.D. Bernal and Robert Merton to this day. It reviews how historians and sociologists of science have explored the role of secrets in commercial and government-sponsored scientific research through the ages. Whether focusing on the medieval, early modern or modern periods, much of this historiography has conceptualized scientific secrets as valuable intellectual property that helps entrepreneurs and autocratic governments gain economic or military advantage over competitors. Following Georg (...) Simmel and Max Weber, this article offers an alternative interpretation of secrecy as a tool to organize and to hierarchically order society. In this view, the knowledge content of secrecy is less important than its social-psychological effects. The authors argue that, in many instances, entrepreneurial researchers and governments use scientific secrets as an effective tool to manipulate the beliefs of their competitors and the larger public, and not necessarily to protect the knowledge that they hold. (shrink)

This paper sketches how late seventeenth-century Dutch anatomists used printed publications to advertise their anatomical preparations, inventions and instructional technologies to an international clientele. It focuses on anatomists Frederik Ruysch and Lodewijk de Bils , inventors of two separate anatomical preparation methods for preserving cadavers and body parts in a lifelike state for decades or centuries. Ruysch's and de Bils's publications functioned as an ‘advertisement’ for their preparations. These printed volumes informed potential customers that anatomical preparations were aesthetically pleasing and (...) scientifically important but did not divulge the trade secrets of the method of production. Thanks to this strategy of non-disclosure and advertisement, de Bils and Ruysch could create a well-working monopoly market of anatomical preparations. The ‘advertising’ rhetorics of anatomical publications highlight the potential dangers of equating the growth of print culture with the development of an open system of knowledge exchange. (shrink)

The Swiss natural historian Johann Amman came to Russia in 1733 to take a position as professor of botany and natural history at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. As part of the job, he corresponded, and exchanged plant specimens, with the English merchant collector Peter Collinson in London, and the Swedish scholar Carolus Linnaeus, among others. After briefly reviewing Amman's correspondence with these scholars and the growing commerce in exotic specimens of natural history, I explore how encyclopedias came to (...) facilitate the exchange of zoological specimens in particular. I argue that, during the seventeenth century, a new genre of zoological encyclopedias appeared on the scene whose design was particularly well-suited for the purposes of identification, a key practice in long-distance exchanges. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 38, Issue 1, pp 176 - 210 Two pirated editions form a vital but neglected part of the printing and reception history of the first edition of Grotius’s _Mare liberum_.

Summary This article argues that commerce and the language of finance had an important influence over the interpretation of curiosities in the early modern period. It traces how learned travellers in the years around 1700 were constantly reminded to watch their purses and to limit their expenses while on the road. As a result, monetary matters also influenced their appreciation of artificialia and naturalia. They judged and compared the aesthetic value of curiosities by mentioning their price. Money offered an easy, (...) telegraphic manner of signalling intrinsic worth. Visitors of cabinets paid attention to the financial value of the collector's books, paintings, and natural specimens, and kept mentioning it in their diaries and correspondence. The keen attention of students, scholars and amateur gentlemen to money suggests that, even if the Republic of Letters operated in a gift economy, its members were much aware of their gifts’ prices. Commercial values deeply infiltrated the erudite discourse of the period. (shrink)

This article situates the collecting practices of museums of natural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in dialogue with similar practices amongst societies in the Pacific by focusing on how European curators, dealers in natural history and Pacific Islanders shared a common fascination withSpondylusshells. In particular, this article examines the processes for turningSpondylusshells into unique or duplicate specimens.Spondylusshells were crucial for regulating gift and commercial exchanges in the societies of both regions. Famously, the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski claimed that (...) these shells were an essential element of the gift-basedkulaexchange, which helped him distinguish Western capitalist society from less developed societies without commercial trade. YetSpondylusshells were also collected and exchanged as gifts amongst British and European naturalists in this period, performing the same roles as in Melanesia. In addition, such gift exchanges could only come into being thanks to the actions of commercially motivated dealers, located both in the Pacific and in Europe, who were the suppliers of these shells both to Melanesian participants in thekulaand to Western natural historians and collectors. These observations call into question earlier arguments that equate modernity with the rise of commercial capitalism. It is instead claimed that commercial and gift exchanges were intricately connected and reliant on each other throughout the period, whether in the worlds of Western museums or in Pacific archipelagos. The act of turningSpondylusshells into unique or duplicate specimens was the key tool for regulating these exchanges. (shrink)

It is the aim of this article to put questions of maintenance and repair in the history of science and technology under scrutiny, with a special focus on technologies and methods of transportation. The history of transportation is a history of trying to avoid shipwrecks and plane crashes. It is also a history of broken masts, worm-eaten hulls, the flat tires of cars, and endless delays at airports. This introductory article assesses the technological, scientific, and cultural implications of repairing and (...) maintaining transportation networks. We argue that infrastructures for maintenance and repair played just as important a role in the history of transportation as the wharves and factories where ships, cars, trains, and airplanes were originally built. We also suggest that maintenance and repair are important sites of knowledge production, and a historical account of these practices provides a new, decentered narrative for the development of modern science and technology. (shrink)

The Huguenot refugee artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues is traditionally known for his observations of North America and as the author of numerous albums of floral drawings. This article reassesses the attribution of several of these albums to Le Moyne based on documentary and stylistic evidence. It identifies the sixteenth-century Huguenot nobleman and diplomat Jacques de Morogues as the owner of one of the albums, and it discusses the production and early use of these albums as luxury gifts in (...) French diplomatic and courtly circles. We document connections between the albums associated with Le Moyne and other sixteenth-century and later works of floral imagery. We argue that the albums associated with Le Moyne show that developments in floral imagery in this period were driven by a distinct network of artists and collectors, and we offer a hypothesis of how members of this network may have interpreted them as an occasion to take pleasure in nature’s charming variety, to praise it as God’s work and to use flowers as symbols of feminine beauty and fertility. (shrink)