ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Ice Harvesting and the Science of Cool in Early Modern Tuscany

• In Event: After Loss: Ephemeral Histories of Science and Technology 1 - Ephemeral Instruments of Knowledge

English Abstract

This paper traces the use of harvested ice in early modern cold science. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Accademia del Cimento began performing freezing experiments. Assessing the properties and effects of heat and cold was a core concern for the new experimental science of their day, feeding into debates between Aristotelians and proponents of new theories of matter. The academy performed its freezing experiments in summer or fall, using ice-and-salt mixtures. Where did they get the ice? Though largely hidden from view and lost to history, harvested ice permeated various aspects of everyday life in early modern Tuscany, regardless of the seasons. Tuscans harvested ice in winter to cool their drinks throughout the year, identifying frozen water as a repository for cold and turning it into a useful natural resource. I trace the connections between the histories of ice consumption, ice harvesting, and ice science in seventeenth-century Tuscany. Focusing on ice and its ephemeral materiality allows us to reconsider the history of early modern cold science as the product of joint entrepreneurial, culinary, and intellectual interest in cooling.

Author

• Anna Speyart, Princeton University