Invention, Philosophy and Technology in the Seventeenth Century

Call for Papers

This symposium will look the history of invention, technology and
philosophy in the early modern era, the ways in which material life changed
in the period. It will consider how the period constituted the
relationships between science, philosophy and craft, or between trade and
society. Topics might include:

Public works and the provision of society - drainage, water, sewers, food,
mining, weapons, surgical instruments, trade and trade-guilds; the
regulation of the city; is 'capitalism' a helpful category for thinking the
early modern era?; what was the relationship between science and society?;
the early modern 'expert'; innovation and tradition; literature and
invention; automata and the early modern machine.

Symposium - May 23rd 2011

CREMS - University of York.

Speakers include: Claire Preston (Birmingham), Ayesha Mukherjee (Exeter)

Contact Kevin Killeen - kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk

This symposium is part of the entirely digressive Thomas Browne Seminar,
whose designs for bullets made no impact whatsoever on the course of the
civil war. http://www.york.ac.uk/english/news-events/browne/
http://www.york.ac.uk/crems/