Craft Knowledge, Print, and Credibility

Isaac Record 23.11.2004

Rising urbanism, a rising merchant class, and the rising status of the mechanical arts as a branch of knowledge led to a qualitatively change in methods of and attitudes about the transmission of scientific and technical material. Modern notions of intellectual property, original authorship, patents, openness, and experiment have roots in these developments, and the subsequent invention of the printing press, while not a sufficient condition for any of them, plays a necessary role in their development. Modern concepts of authorship, credit, and credibility of text were the result of arduous work by authors and printers alike. Print was a catalyst for and enabler of these modern concepts.

Section 1: Craft Secrecy and Patent Openness The interplay between the technology of print and its social context is crucial to understanding the impact of print. In order to assess the impact of print on the transmission of scientific and technical material, it is necessary to examine such transmission prior to print. In the 12th century, the population of Europe increased rapidly, larger cities were built, the first universities were formed, and an “expanded network of industry and trade” created pressures for social change.1 Aristotelian and Arabic texts made their way into Western Europe during the same period.2 Writers came to laud commerce because it “reconciles nations, calms wars, strengthens peace, and commutes the private good of individuals into the common benefit of all”3 and recognize that “artisans who work with their hands know more about the mechanical arts than the philosophers.”4 By the 13th and 14th centuries, the rise in status of technical knowledge led to an increase in craft guilds.5 These guilds, in contrast to Roman guilds that served primarily social functions, had a proprietary attitude toward craft knowledge, and they operated to maintain the reputation and credibility of such knowledge.6 The 13th trading city of Venice exemplifies the changing practices of secrecy and openness that accompanied this proprietary attitude toward craft knowledge. Venetian glass was highly prized throughout Europe, and to maintain its competitive edge on rival cities, Venice construed craft knowledge as communal property, banning artisans from transmitting their glassmaking skills beyond

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the borders of Venice and issuing fines to any who did so.7 As a result, glassmaking skills were secreted away. In response, “early patents were issued to Italian glassmakers in Antwerp, Holland, England, France, Germany, and Austria.”8 Such patents gave artisans a time-limited monopoly to operate in a given region, after which time that region would inherit their craft knowledge. Such incentives worked, and glassmaking techniques spread. Patents were meant to benefit the city. They arose as a way for a city or state to purchase new technology, not as recognition of original authorship; indeed, possession of a skill was enough to warrant the issue of a patent. Most cities explicitly encouraged innovation, but did not require original authorship for the issue of a patent.9 As a result of this changed understanding of the value of craft knowledge, some artisans of the 15th century separated themselves from guilds and authored books showing off their inventiveness in order to attract patrons.10 Until this time, transmission of technical knowledge was almost exclusively oral—for good reason: most artisans were illiterate. What manuscripts did exist were written for elites or as protective measures when craft knowledge seemed threatened. Throughout his writing, the architect-engineer Filippo Brunelleschi praises creativity and shows evidence for a concept of ownership of ideas and inventions.11 The demand for practitioners such as Brunelleschi increased because the new rising class of merchants were beginning to validate their power by reconstructing and ornamenting cities.12 This concentration of political power in craft put artisans in high esteem and high demand, feeding the growing trend toward a modern conception of original authorship and intellectual property. The existence of these trends prior to the introduction of the printing press must be acknowledged in order to correctly assess the effects of print.

Section 2: Print Medium Print is not the only mechanism for the transmission of scientific and technical material, and it was certainly not the most common such mechanism at its inception—as already stated, most technicians were illiterate. Print has always coexisted with the manuscript, correspondence, and apprenticeship, each of which straightforwardly implicates an intended audience.13 Considering the

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three types of knowledge reveals the advantages and disadvantages of each method for effectively transmitting the intended material. Although print can easily transmit propositional knowledge (“know that,” e.g. “snow is white”), it has some difficulty transmitting acquaintance knowledge (“know what,” e.g. the experience of pain) or performative knowledge (“know how,” e.g. how to ride a bicycle).14 Every element expressible in print—text, tables of data, charts, maps, and drawings—in some way constrains the type of information that can be expressed. Theophilus, da Vinci, and Ramelli (see Appendix) exemplify three ways of conveying technical material comprising all three types of knowledge. Theophilus (Figure 115), writing in the early 12th century and using text alone, attempts to impart his performative knowledge of bell casting, but words are clearly unequal to the task. What sort of green to look for is clearly acquaintance knowledge, and how to safely manipulate the equipment is clearly performative knowledge—knowledge the reader simply has no access to. Through his superb use of technical drawings and explanatory text, Da Vinci (Figure 216), writing in the late 15th century, is able to convey much of the acquaintance knowledge missing from Theophilus. Unfortunately, at the time of his writing, da Vinci’s intricate drawings, not to mention their delicate interweaving with text, would have been impossible (or at least infeasible) to reproduce either by a scribe or in print. Ramelli’s 16th century publication includes letter-indexed drawings of technology in its context of use, which do much to convey this same acquaintance knowledge (Figures 3 and 417). What differentiates Theophilus from Ramelli, besides 350 years, is the expectation that the medium could reliably reproduce pictorial representations. This expectation of “fixity” was not inherent to the medium of print; several versions of Galileo’s 17th century work had significant errors in the pictorial representations (Figure 518). It took much work and experimentation to find workable solutions (exploded diagrams, letter-indexed pictures, in-situ drawings, etc.), but the capacity for reliable reproductions was present in print where wide variability was to be expected in script.

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Eisenstein has argued that text does carry with it an inherent fixity due to its mode of production. A quick rehearsal of her argument is that because of the economics of printing, multiple copies were always to be expected, 19 and because of the mechanically repetitive nature of the production method, virtually identical copies could be expected from within a given run. As a result, errors (and correctives20) were standardized, print gained authority, credit became valuable, and priority claims increased, 21 providing a “powerful new incentives to open closed sketchbooks and publicize the tricks of various trades.”22 In fact, fixity is not inherent in the medium of print.23 In practice, correctors worked throughout production, making changes mid-batch, so that even when a book was produced by a single printer—not always the case—books from the same “edition” could have dramatic differences.24 Fixity, it turns out, required quite a lot of work, and this work began with the problem of credibility (next section). Eisenstein is not wholly wrong, however. The mode of print production had dramatic implications for the volume of material that could be transmitted,25 though it must be noted that the existence of new capacity does not imply the demand to fill it. As well, the competitive business of print allowed organizational efforts to adopt some standard practices (e.g. alphabetical indices)26. Eisenstein’s error is mainly in giving print a causal role where an enabling role would be more appropriate.

Section 3: Building Credibility for Print As is the case with the Internet today, the veracity of information found in books produced during the first centuries of print was highly suspect. There was no way to know if the supposed author wrote a book, let alone whether the content had any value. Virtually nothing we now take for granted about books could be taken for granted in the 15th, 16th or 17th centuries. Printing was, without a doubt, a booming business, but it was hardly a trusted one. Throughout these first centuries of the commercial book trade, there was nothing approaching regularity: standards varied widely and virtually every popular book was pirated or imitated. 27 In 1644, Milton wrote of the populace “trying” different books, and indication that there was no inherent trust of their content.28 Still, books professed

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to contain knowledge, and readers presumably hoped to gain knowledge from what they read. This was the problem of credibility. In a sea of deception, how could a well-meaning author, printer, or publisher convince potential readers that their book was not a deception? Concerns over the proliferation of usurped, pirated, or imitated texts precipitated an alliance between the Royal Society and printers to create a context of “disciplined reading, registration, and publication” through which trust could be built. The result was quite remarkable in its construction, as it required cooperating as a group, gaining corporate license, transmitting materials in the form of a periodical publication, and policing the reading as well as the publication of materials.29 Three factors were of especial importance: a rhetorical appeal to unimpeachable character, to replicability, and to authority by the creation of a registry for all materials received or created by the society. The Royal Society consciously modelled itself after the ideal gentleman, who possessed the qualities of “broad experience, modesty, moderation, freedom of action, and disinterest.”30 These qualities were meant to free the Society from base financial motives and to distinguish its debate from that of passionate dogmatism and factionalism. Though the Society was closed to outsiders, “conversation, skill, correspondence, and print” were important to the transmission of experimental philosophy.31 It was through this communication that the Society maintained its reputation. Personal correspondence was especially important in creating a relationship between the Society and its audience. It was the credibility of the gentlemen members of the Society upon which the credibility of the Society—and its Transactions—depended. The credibility of the members witnessing an experiment was the explicit guarantee for the reader that the results were trustworthy.32 Such experiments, presented in the Transactions with enough textual (though, strangely, rarely pictorial) detail to allow the reader to “virtually witness” the experiment.33 This helped to satisfy the stated goal of replicability: instead of having to actually

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replicate an experiment, readers could be convinced of the experimental conditions by the rhetorical detail and of the result by the presence of a credible audience. The other important mechanism for sealing the credibility of the Society was the register. Into the register went every fact, technique, theory, or paper received by the Society, along with the name and date.34 This provided a paper trail with which to resolve priority disputes and give credit appropriately. Of course this register may have been abused, but at the very least the creation of an authority such as this register was a powerful rhetorical device. It was only through deliberate methods such as these that authors and printers were able to manufacture credibility for themselves and their works. Without this effort, it is doubtful that modern concepts of intellectual property and original authorship could have taken root in the profound way that they have.

Conclusion Arising as it did in the context of rising urbanism and a merchant class that valued craft knowledge, the printing press entailed a dramatic opportunity for the wide distribution of certain kinds of scientific and technical material. Modern notions of original authorship, intellectual property, openness, and secrecy have roots that predate the proliferation of printing presses, yet the press played a role in constraining, encouraging, or directing the development of such concepts. The explosion of print precipitated a crisis of credibility in books, and the continuing demand for scientific and technical works prompted many responses to this crisis. The development of the scientific journal, the rhetoric of experimental description, and the modern regularity and credibility of printed works find their roots in the context of this crisis. 1

Whitney, Paradise Restored, 75. Whitney, Paradise Restored, 40. 3 Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalion 2.22, 2.25, 2.27 (Taylor 76, 77-78, Buttimer 40-41, 42-43, 44) in Whitney, Paradise Restored, 86. 4 Edward Kilwardby in Whitney, Paradise Restored, 87. 5 Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 88. 2

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Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 88-89. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 90. 8 Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 93. 9 Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 94. 10 Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 96. 11 Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship,97. 12 Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 101. 13 It should be noted that certain persons of means, such as Tycho Brahe, utilised his press to print what amount to gifts for royal patrons, but this was far from the typical usage of print. See Johns, Nature of Book, 17. 14 Three types due to Schick and Vaughn, Doing Philosophy, 483. 15 Theophilus Presbyter, On Divers Arts (Smith and Hawthorne, trans.) . 16 Dr. Jean Mathe, Leonardo da Vinci. 17 Smithsonian, Ramelli’s Machines. 18 Johns, Nature of Book, 22. 19 Eisenstein, Printing Press, 44, 46. 20 Eisenstein, Printing Press, 108, 80. 21 Eisenstein, Printing Press, 119. 22 Eisenstein, Printing Press, 554. 23 Johns, Nature of Book, 2. 24 Johns, Nature of Book, 90-91. 25 Eisenstein, Printing Press, 8. 26 Eisenstein, Printing Press, 90. 27 Johns, Nature of Book, 33. 28 Johns, Nature of Book, 58. 29 Johns, Nature of Book, 445. 30 Johns, Nature of Book, 468. 31 Johns, Nature of Book, 475. 32 Johns, Nature of Book, 469. 33 Johns, Nature of Book, 45. 34 Johns, Nature of Book, 476. 7

Appendix

Print

Figure 3: Ramelli’s Mill Drawing—this is a drawing of a mill designed to operate continuously through the use of two counterweights. Compare the engraving on the following page.

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Appendix

Print

Figure 4: Ramelli’s Mill Engraving—this engraving appears as Plate CXXXI (p. 204) in the printed book Le Diverse et Artificiose Machine, published in Paris in 1588. Note the in situ drawing and use of letter indices.

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Works Cited Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: 1979. Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, Chicago: 1998. Long, Pamela O. Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Baltimore: Hopkins, 2001. Whitney, Elspeth. Paradise Restored: The Mechanical Arts from Antiquity through the Thirteenth Century. Philadelphia: “Transactions of the American Philosophical Society,” vol. 80, part 1, 1990, pp. 1-149. Figures Figure 1: Theophilus Presbyter, On Divers Arts. Ed. and trans. C.S. Smith and J. Hawthorne. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Figure 2: Mathe, Jean. Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical Drawings. trans. David Macrae, Spain: Miller Graphics, 1978. Figures 3 and 4: “Ramelli’s Machines: Original drawings of 16th century machines.” Smithsonian Institution Libraries on Display. http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/ramelli/. Materials from Ramelli, Agostino. Le Diverse et Artificiose Machine. Paris, 1588. Figure 5: Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 22.