Small tools of knowledge... historical articles about academic and administrative practices

This volume brings together historians of science and social historians to examine the role of “little tools”—tables, reports, questionnaires, files, and index cards—in establishing academic and administrative claims to authority and objectivity. Since at least the eighteenth century, our sciences and our society have been planned, surveyed, examined, and evaluated according to specific techniques for collecting and storing knowledge. Recently, the intuitive nature of these cognitive and administrative tools, as well as the formulation in which they are used, has called for in-depth historical study. The essays collected here, arranged chronologically by topic from the late seventeenth century to the late twentieth century, include close readings of original texts and analyzes of academic and administrative practices as part of material culture. The first essays, dealing with the early modern period, largely point to the existence of a “legal-theological” framework for consolidating authority. Subsequent essays show the decline in the role of authority as such in the modern era, and the emergence of the concept of “objectivity.” Most of the articles here address the German cultural space as one of the best examples of the aforementioned academic and administrative practices. However, the book's introduction is at a general level, while the concluding essays broaden the scope of analyzes to include broader considerations of authority and objectivity in historical practice, going beyond Germany. This book will be of interest to students of European history and German studies, as well as historians of science. Peter Baker is Professor of Central European History at the European University Institute, and William Clark is Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.