Early Modern Fire

Science, Technology, and the Urban Space
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-90-04-52175-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 95, 364 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 839 g

Reihe: Intersections

Early Modern Fire offers new perspectives on the history of fire in early modern Europe (ca. 1600–1800). Far from the background role that scholarship has traditionally assigned to fire, the essays in this volume demonstrate its centrality to understanding the entangled histories of science, technology, and society in the pre-industrial period.

Analysing case studies ranging from alchemy to cooking and from firefighting to fireworks, the contributors show that the history of fire is not only one of change and progress, but also of continuity, characterised by the persistence of traditional know-how, small-scale innovation, and the coexistence of different paradigms.

Contributors: Gianenrico Bernasconi, Catherine Denys, Hannah Elmer, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Olivier Jandot, Cyril Lacheze, Andrew M.A. Morris, Cornelia Mu¨ller, Be´renge`re Pinaud, Stefano Salvia, Marco Storni, Marie The´baud-Sorger, and Simon Werrett.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bernasconi, Gianenrico

Storni, Marco

Fachgebiete

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

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

Notes on the Editors

Notes on the Contributors

Introduction: the Early Modern Fire

Gianenrico Bernasconi and Marco Storni

Part 1: Fire in Early Modern Science

1 Purity, Purification, and Fire in the Seventeenth-Century Chymical Texts of Nicaise Le Febvre and Michael Sendivogius

Hannah Elmer

2 'Atoms of Fire': Galileo’s Unachieved Theory of Heat and the Beginnings of Thermometry (c.1603–1638)

Stefano Salvia

3 Without a Thermometer: the Technical Knowledge of Heat in the Early Modern Age

Marco Storni

4 Working with Fire: Remedy Making from the Shop to the Garden in the Apothecaries’ Guild (Eighteenth Century, Paris)

Bérengère Pinaud

Part 2: Early Modern Fire Technologies

5 The Kitchen Fire (Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century)

Gianenrico Bernasconi

6 Fire Mechanics: Inventors and Promoters of Heating Systems (Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century)

Olivier Jandot

7 ‘The Manner of Conducting Fire’: Firing Architectural Terracotta in the Modern Era, between Know-How, Wood Shortage, and Innovations

Cyril Lacheze

8 John Smeaton’s Fire Engine Trials

Andrew M.A. Morris

Part 3: Fire in the Urban Space

9 The Outbreak of Fire: Inventions, Materials, and Combustion Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century

Marie Thébaud-Sorger

10 What Firefighting Tells Us about Eighteenth-Century Urban Police

Catherine Denys

11 Organising the Chaos: Firefighting in Upper Lusatia in the Early Modern Period

Cornelia Müller

12 Spectacle, Enthusiasm, Objectivity – Managing Fire as an Emoterial

Simon Werrett

Conclusion: the Technicity of Fire in Modern Europe – a Historiographical Crossroads

Liliane Hilaire-Pérez

Index Nominum

Über Autor(innen)

Gianenrico Bernasconi, Ph.D. (2009, University of Paris 1-Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) is associate professor and “directeur de recherche” at the Université de Neuchâtel. He is the author of Objets portatifs au siècle des Lumières (Paris: 2015) and co-editor of several other volumes.

Marco Storni, Ph.D. (2018, ENS Paris-Università di Bologna) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Universite´ libre de Bruxelles. He is the author of Maupertuis. Le philosophe, l’académicien, le polémiste (Paris: 2022; prize of the Fondation Del Duca-Institut de France 2023).