Manual Labor and ‘Mean Mechanicks’: Bacon’s Mechanical History and the Deprecation of Craft Skills in Early Modern Science

摘要

This paper aims to assess the credibility of the legitimation thesis; the claimrnthat the development of experimental science involved a legitimation of certainrnaspects of artisanal practice or craft knowledge. My goal will be to provide arncritique of this idea by examining Francis Bacon’s notion of ‘mechanical history’rnand the influence it exerted on attempts by later generations of scholars tornappropriate the knowledge of craft traditions. Specifically, I aim to show howrnsuch projects were often premised upon socio-epistemological ideals that served tornreinforce, rather than relinquish boundaries between artisans and naturalrnphilosophers. It will be my claim that a closer examination of the presuppositionsrnunderlying attempts by early modern natural philosophers to appropriaterncraft knowledge reveals, not a desire to legitimize aspects of artisanalrnpractice, but rather strategies aimed at demonstrating the inferiority of thernlocal ways of knowing upon which it was based.