Chapter 2 - Daedalus and Proteus

Summary

In the seventeenth century British natural philosophers explored the cognitive value of mechanical trades. From the beginning, these explorations of down-to-earth manual processes were expressed in oblique and ironic texts. In utopian fictions by Thomas More, Francis Bacon and Gabriel Plattes, mechanical trades were presented as at once near-at-hand and alien to the world of books and codified knowledge. Bacon’s mid-century followers tried to negotiate these difficulties in plans to compile a comprehensive ‘History of Trades’. In the period’s most widely circulated didactic text, Izaac Walton’s Compleat Angler, the tacit and haptic dimension of a humble pass-time was explored through genial satire and eccentric textual design. Later, one highly literate artisan, the printer and instrument maker Joseph Moxon, gave thought to the difference between the artisanal expertise he employed as a manual technician and the theoretical knowledge he dealt with as a writer and fellow of the Royal Society.