Horowitzschultz3104

What are historians doing in the laboratory? Looking back over six years of collaborative work, researchers of the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University discuss their experience with hands-on reconstruction as a historical method. This work engages practical forms of knowledge-from pigment-making to metal casting-recorded in the BnF Ms. Fr. 640, an anonymous French manuscript compiled in the later sixteenth century. Bodily encounters with materials and processes of the past offer insights into the material and mental worlds of early modern artists and artisans, and train the eye in the interpretation of historical objects. At the same time, reconstruction contributes to the interpretation of the text it is only by attempting to implement the instructions of practical or recipe literature that these texts can be understood as vehicles of emergent knowledge that only fully manifests itself in the doing. Overall, our approach to reconstruction mirrors that of the anonymous author-practitioner, who explored a wide range of techniques through experimenting and writing.Early modern medicine was much more dependent on the senses than its contemporary counterpart. Takinib in vivo Although a comprehensive medical theory existed that assigned great value to taste and odor of medicaments, historical descriptions of taste and odor appears imprecise and inconsistent to modern eyes. How did historical actors move from subjective experience of taste and odor to culturally stable agreements that facilitated communication about the sensory properties of medicaments? This paper addresses this question, not by investigating texts, but by going straight to the sensory impression, which certain substances convey. The aim is not to overwrite or rectify historical descriptions but to investigate whether modern methodologies for sensory assessment can be enlisted to understand the past. We draw on history of science for framing and research questions, pharmaceutical science for knowledge of pharmaceuticals and preparations, and food and meal science for assaying procedures and protocols. We show that sensory evaluation can yield precise descriptions that would not have been alien to early modern medicine makers. However, there are problems with translating descriptions of taste between different historical contexts. By comparing contemporary descriptions of sensations with eighteenth-century ones, the article discusses how sensory descriptions are highly dependent on context, and subject to historical change.This article discusses the (re)construction and use of an Early modern instrument, better known as Herman Boerhaave's (1668-1738) little furnace. We investigate the origins, history and materiality of this furnace, and examine the dynamic relationship between historical study and reconstructing and handling an object. We argue that combining textual analysis with performative methods allows us to gain a better understanding of both the role of lost material culture in historical chemical practice, pedagogy, and knowledge production, and provide a deeper understanding of the embodied experiences and knowledge of historical actors. Having made and used two versions of Boerhaave's furnace, we provide insight in what present-day working models can tell us about historical materials and practices approximately three centuries ago.Performative methods have been part of history of science research and education for at least three decades. Understood broadly, they cover every methodology in which a historian or philosopher of science engages in embodied interaction with sources, tools and materials that do not traditionally belong to historical research, with the aim of answering a historical research question. The question no longer appears to be whether performative methods have a place within history and philosophy of science research, but what their place is, could, or should be; when and how they can and cannot be used. Because although performative methods are seen as an enrichment of the field by many, their growing popularity also raises questions what new insights and challenges has the increased use of performative methods in the history of science brought us? How has it changed the field? Should performative research methods become a mandatory part of the training of new generations of historians of science? In this special issue, historians and philosophers of science for whom performative methods play an important role in their work reflect on these questions from their own research and teaching practices.Perfumes embody a chemical record of style and technology. Blurring the boundary between what counts as natural and artificial in both a material and a perceptual sense, perfumery presents us with a domain of multiple disciplinary identities relevant to social studies art, craft, and techno-science. Despite its profound impact as a cultural practice, perfume has seldom featured in historical scholarship. The reason for this neglect is its inherently qualitative dimension perfume cannot be understood via codified representation but requires direct acquaintance with its sensory and material basis. The historical study of perfumery thus necessitates an experimental approach that comes not without challenge. This article looks at contemporary recreations of old perfumes to identify the difficulties involved in the experimental recreation of fragrances as sensory and performative artifacts. We highlight the need for a reconceptualization of methodology for inconcrete objects of study as part of the broader interest in experimental approaches to the humanities.This essay discusses imitation coral reconstruction workshops based on a recipe from a sixteenth-century "book of secrets" that took place in three different educational contexts Columbia University, Nunavut Arctic College, and Universität Hamburg. It reflects on the utility of reconstruction and material literacy as present-day history of science methodologies in which scholarly textual interpretation meets physical research. It also considers the nature of cultural heritage in shaping material practice through an Inuit cultural context, in which the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge is not rooted in textual traditions, but bodily embedded in oral histories, craft technology, and land stewardship. The essay also presents suggestions for new collaborative practices between humanists, artisans, and scientists that can be facilitated by reconstruction methodology.