Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance

by Pamela O. Long

Overview

A history of the book and intellectual property that includes military technology and military secrets.

Winner of The Morris D. Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas

In today's world of intellectual property disputes, industrial espionage, and book signings by famous authors, one easily loses sight of the historical nature of the attribution and ownership of texts. In Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Pamela Long combines intellectual history with the history of science and technology to explore the culture of authorship. Using classical Greek as well as medieval and Renaissance European examples, Long traces the definitions, limitations, and traditions of intellectual and scientific creation and attribution. She examines these attitudes as they pertain to the technical and the practical. Although Long's study follows a chronological development, this is not merely a general work. Long is able to examine events and sources within their historical context and locale. By looking at Aristotelian ideas of Praxis, Techne, and Episteme. She explains the tension between craft and ideas, authors and producers. She discusses, with solid research and clear prose, the rise, wane, and resurgence of priority in the crediting and lionizing of authors. Long illuminates the creation and re-creation of ideas like "trade secrets," "plagiarism," "mechanical arts," and "scribal culture." Her historical study complicates prevailing assumptions while inviting a closer look at issues that define so much of our society and thought to this day. She argues that "a useful working definition of authorship permits a gradation of meaning between the poles of authority and originality," and guides us through the term's nuances with clarity rarely matched in a historical study.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801880612
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2004
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Pamela O. Long is a historian who has taught at Barnard College,St. Mary's College of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University. She has been a fellow at the Folger Institute for Renaissance and Eighteenth Century Studies, a Senior Fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at M.I.T, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Rome Prize fellow at the American Academy in Rome, and a fellow at the Davis Center at Princeton University. Her articles have appeared in Isis, Technology and Culture, and elsewhere. She is the editor of Science and Technology in Medieval Society; and the author of Technology, Society and Culture in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 1300-1600; and Technology and Society in the Medieval Centuries: Byzantium, Islam and the West, 500-1300.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Editions and Translations
Introduction. Categories and Key Words: Local Meaning in Long-Term History
Chapter 1. Open Authorship with Ancient Traditions of Techne and Praxis
Chapter 2. Secrecy and Esoteric Knowledge in Late Antiquity
Chapter 3. Handing Down Craft Knowledge
Chapter 4. Authorship on the Mechanical Arts in the Last Scribal Age
Chapter 5. Secrecy and the Esoteric Traditions of the Renaissance
Chapter 6. Openness and Authorship I: Mining, Metallurgy, and the Military Arts
Chapter 7. Openness and Authorship II: Painting, Architecture, and the Other Arts
Epiloguse. Values of Transmission and the New Sciences
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Pamela H. Smith

Long's book revises several received views of attitudes to secrecy and ownership of craft traditions and it also contributes to the ongoing investigation of the relationship of craft traditions in the emergence of the new philosophy (what came to be known as 'science') in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In both these areas, it provides new information and a new approach. This book will appeal to historians of science and technology, and it is a significant addition to literature in these fields.

— Pamela H. Smith, Pomona College, Claremont

From the Publisher

Long's book revises several received views of attitudes to secrecy and ownership of craft traditions and it also contributes to the ongoing investigation of the relationship of craft traditions in the emergence of the new philosophy (what came to be known as 'science') in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In both these areas, it provides new information and a new approach. This book will appeal to historians of science and technology, and it is a significant addition to literature in these fields.
—Pamela H. Smith, Pomona College, Claremont

Editorial Reviews

Through insightful interpretation of her sources, Long demonstrates how written texts can, in fact, provide evidence of secrecy. In the process, she provides a nuanced understanding of the relationship between knowledge, texts, power, and work.

Renaissance Quarterly - Beverly Sauer

This important study examines the roles and implications for technical fields of what we would now call 'intellectual property,' from antiquity through the Renaissance. Much has been made, and rightly so, about changes in attitudes and access to technological knowledge and innovations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . . . To identify, examine, and explain such changes over a broad span of time requires extensive, broad investigation and careful source reading. Long demonstrates both in a work that repays careful reading.

Speculum - Ann E. Moyer

In our well-defined world of classicists, medievalists, and early modernists, books like Openness, Secrecy, Authorship have become increasingly rare. Pamela Long, ignoring all those unspoken caveats about periodization has courageously gone where few others dare to go by crafting an argument that extends from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond.

Technology and Culture - Andre Wakefield

A historical argument of sweeping scale . . . In considering the shifting notions of openness and secrecy with respect to technical knowledge, and the varying styles and rewards of technical authorship over many centuries, Long sheds greater light on the fruitful interactions between craft practitioners, learned scholars, and the patrons who supported both . . . An engaging and detailed history of technical authorship.

Early Science and Medicine - Eric H. Ash

Long's book inaugurates a new standard in the ongoing effort to breach field boundaries in pursuit of historical knowledge. It represents a welcome addition to the ongoing discussion and revision of renaissance intellectual history.

Sixteenth Century Journal

A fascinating overview of an enormous variety of writings in technical, craft and practical traditions from antiquity to the early modern period.

British Journal for the History of Science

Long discusses above all the ways in which practical know-how and discursive traditions of knowledge have interwoven with each other to produce (just over the temporal horizon the seventeenth-century experimental philosophy mentioned in the book's 'Epilogue'.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science - Peter Dear

This thorough and learned book is a significant addition to our knowledge of artisanal culture and writing, the history of authorship, the history of the book, and the history of science. It thus belongs on the bookshelf of scholars in a wide variety of fields.

American Historical Review - Kevin Dunn

This important study examines the roles and implications for technical fields of what we would now call 'intellectual property,' from antiquity through the Renaissance. Much has been made, and rightly so, about changes in attitudes and access to technological knowledge and innovations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries... To identify, examine, and explain such changes over a broad span of time requires extensive, broad investigation and careful source reading. Long demonstrates both in a work that repays careful reading.

— Ann E. Moyer

Speculum

Through insightful interpretation of her sources, Long demonstrates how written texts can, in fact, provide evidence of secrecy. In the process, she provides a nuanced understanding of the relationship between knowledge, texts, power, and work.

— Beverly Sauer

Renaissance Quarterly

Long discusses above all the ways in which practical know-how and discursive traditions of knowledge have interwoven with each other to produce (just over the temporal horizon the seventeenth-century experimental philosophy mentioned in the book's 'Epilogue'.

— Peter Dear

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

Long's book inaugurates a new standard in the ongoing effort to breach field boundaries in pursuit of historical knowledge. It represents a welcome addition to the ongoing discussion and revision of renaissance intellectual history.

Sixteenth-Century Journal

A historical argument of sweeping scale... In considering the shifting notions of openness and secrecy with respect to technical knowledge, and the varying styles and rewards of technical authorship over many centuries, Long sheds greater light on the fruitful interactions between craft practitioners, learned scholars, and the patrons who supported both... An engaging and detailed history of technical authorship.

— Eric H. Ash

Early Science and Medicine

This thorough and learned book is a significant addition to our knowledge of artisanal culture and writing, the history of authorship, the history of the book, and the history of science. It thus belongs on the bookshelf of scholars in a wide variety of fields.

— Kevin Dunn

American Historical Review

In our well-defined world of classicists, medievalists, and early modernists, books like Openness, Secrecy, Authorship have become increasingly rare. Pamela Long, ignoring all those unspoken caveats about periodization has courageously gone where few others dare to go by crafting an argument that extends from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond.

— Andre Wakefield

Technology and Culture

Long's book revises several received views of attitudes to secrecy and ownership of craft traditions and it also contributes to the ongoing investigation of the relationship of craft traditions in the emergence of the new philosophy (what came to be known as 'science' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In both these areas, it provides new information and a new approach. This book will appeal to historians of science and technology, and it is a significant addition to literature in these fields.

Pamela H. Smith

I am deeply impressed by her research, by the range of her work, as well as by the depth of understanding she has achieved. It is rare enough to find someone who has a working knowledge of even one of the many writers she discusses to find that she can work with such a range of materials and not become superficial in the least is quite unusual. A worthwhile study.

Bert S. Hall

Drawing substantially on writings from technical, craft, and practical traditions, at-large historian Long investigates what is now called intellectual property from the earliest European literature to the verge of the Industrial Revolution. Rather than trace changes in any particular technology, she explores such issues as whether knowledge is open or secret, which topics become the focus of written authority, and in what contexts knowledge is taken to be property. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

In our well-defined world of classicists, medievalists, and early modernists, books like Openness, Secrecy, Authorship have become increasingly rare. Pamela Long, ignoring all those unspoken caveats about periodization has courageously gone where few others dare to go by crafting an argument that extends from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond.
—Andre Wakefield, Technology and Culture

This thorough and learned book is a significant addition to our knowledge of artisanal culture and writing, the history of authorship, the history of the book, and the history of science. It thus belongs on the bookshelf of scholars in a wide variety of fields.
—Kevin Dunn, American Historical Review

A historical argument of sweeping scale . . . In considering the shifting notions of openness and secrecy with respect to technical knowledge, and the varying styles and rewards of technical authorship over many centuries, Long sheds greater light on the fruitful interactions between craft practitioners, learned scholars, and the patrons who supported both . . . An engaging and detailed history of technical authorship.
—Eric H. Ash, Early Science and Medicine

Long's book inaugurates a new standard in the ongoing effort to breach field boundaries in pursuit of historical knowledge. It represents a welcome addition to the ongoing discussion and revision of renaissance intellectual history.
—Sixteenth Century Journal

Long discusses above all the ways in which practical know-how and discursive traditions of knowledge have interwoven with each other to produce (just over the temporal horizon the seventeenth-century experimental philosophy mentioned in the book's 'Epilogue'.
—Peter Dear, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

Through insightful interpretation of her sources, Long demonstrates how written texts can, in fact, provide evidence of secrecy. In the process, she provides a nuanced understanding of the relationship between knowledge, texts, power, and work.
—Beverly Sauer, Renaissance Quarterly

This important study examines the roles and implications for technical fields of what we would now call 'intellectual property,' from antiquity through the Renaissance. Much has been made, and rightly so, about changes in attitudes and access to technological knowledge and innovations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . . . To identify, examine, and explain such changes over a broad span of time requires extensive, broad investigation and careful source reading. Long demonstrates both in a work that repays careful reading.
—Ann E. Moyer, Speculum

A fascinating overview of an enormous variety of writings in technical, craft and practical traditions from antiquity to the early modern period.
—British Journal for the History of Science

From the Publisher