Theory's Practice: Reflections on Technology in Germany Around 1800

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-54953-1
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 19, 268 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Technology and Change in History

What is technology? When we grapple with this question, we try to understand something fundamental about humanity, given that technical objects and practices inform every aspect of our lives.

The focus in this study on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany underscores a pivotal moment in technology’s conceptual history and offers a fresh perspective. The translations and interpretive essays in this volume show how those writers engaged with technology reflected on its history and innovations even as they engaged in more speculative thinking.

Their work, definitive of a historical epoch, can still speak to us today.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Holland, Jocelyn

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Translator’s Note

Introduction: the Past, Present and Future of “Technology,” circa 1800

Part 1: From technologia to Technologie

Essay: Overview of the Entry on “Technologie” from Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Universal Lexicon

Translation: Zedler’s Lexicon Entry, “Technologie”

Essay: Johann Beckmann (1739–1811): Technological Objects, Practices, and Ideas

Translation: Beckmann’s Preface to the Guide to Technology, 1st Edition (1777)

Translation: Introduction to the Guide to Technology, 1st Edition (1777)

Part 2: Technological Orders

Essay: Two Genres, Two Approaches to Technology: a Dictionary and a System

Translation: Johann Beckmann’s Preface to the Technological Dictionary, 1st Edition (1781)

Translation: Johann Jacobsson’s Preface to the Technological Dictionary, 1st Edition (1781)

Translation: Introduction to Georg Lamprecht’s Instruction Book of Technology, 1st Edition (1787)

Part 3: General vs. Historical Technology, circa 1800

Essay: Technology’s Two Perspectives: the General and the Historical

Translation: Johann Beckmann’s Draft of a General Technology, 1st Edition (1806)

Translation: Preface to Johann Poppe’s History of Technology, 1st Edition (1807)

Translation: General Introduction to Johann Poppe’s History of Technology, 1st Edition (1807)

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Jocelyn Holland is Professor of Comparative Literature at Caltech. Her book-length publications include German Romanticism and Science (Routledge, 2009); Key Texts by Johann Wilhelm Ritter on the Science and Art of Nature (Brill, 2010); and The Lever as Instrument of Reason: Technological Constructions of Knowledge around 1800 (Bloomsbury, 2019).