Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Liquid Dangers: Buildings on the Sea

Fri, March 31, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Palmer House Hilton, Floor: Seventh Floor, Burnham 4

Abstract

Expertise in shipbuilding allowed for voyages of trade, discovery and conquest. Shipbuilders and captains alike promoted their practical and theoretical knowledge of mathematics as evidence of their status and value within their fields. Their ability to explain or demonstrate their knowledge in words (and text) further bolstered their reputation by aligning tacit skills of building construction and sea navigation, for example, with broadly valued categories of geometry, natural philosophy, cartography, and so on. Yet for all this expertise, both tacit and learned, nature (and especially the watery domain) offered a steady source of resistance. Leakage, hidden rocks, ice that held ships prisoner: all the steadfastness of knowledge could do little in the face of the fluid forces of the sea that moved ships in ways that could not be expected nor controlled. This talk examines this resistance of nature against the knowledge and expertise in the early modern period.

Author