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9 - Homes and Households

from Part II - Personae and Sites of Natural Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Alix Cooper
Edited by
Katharine Park  and
Lorraine Daston
Katharine Park
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Lorraine Daston
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin
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Summary

Where did early modern natural inquiry take place? Research by historians of science has begun to suggest that many of the activities crucial to the Scientific Revolution took place not only in such recognizably new and innovative sites as botanical gardens, anatomy theaters, laboratories, and the quarters of scientific societies but also – and often simultaneously – within the seemingly humble and prosaic spaces of natural inquirers’ own homes and households. These domestic spaces in fact saw the production of natural knowledge of all kinds, as their occupants used them as places not just to sleep but also to think, write, calculate, observe, and experiment on natural phenomena. Furthermore, while doing so, they frequently ended up enlisting household members in these projects. In this way, homes and households became crucial sites for the pursuit of natural knowledge in early modern Europe.

Few historians of science have paid attention to these kinds of “private” spaces. One of the main reasons for this is almost certainly the way in which, over the past several centuries, scientific work has gradually come to be conceptualized as occuring primarily outside the home. This particular assumption is itself a historical artifact, stemming from modern changes in the organization of work more broadly. During the nineteenth century in particular, as more and more people abandoned home-based workshops and began to travel to new places of employment, newly labeled “scientists” likewise increasingly came to work outside the home in institutional spaces that were perceived as religiously and emotionally neutral. In the process, considerable ideological boundaries were erected between work and family, and between public and private realms, which have continued to shape modern thinking.

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The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 224 - 237
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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