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Reckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage
From Blaise Pascal in the 1600s to Charles Babbage in the first half of the nineteenth century, inventors struggled to create the first calculating machines. All failed—but that does not mean we cannot learn from the trail of ideas, correspondence, machines, and arguments they left behind.
In Reckoning with Matter, Matthew L. Jones draws on the remarkably extensive and well-preserved records of the quest to explore the concrete processes involved in imagining, elaborating, testing, and building calculating machines. He explores the writings of philosophers, engineers, and craftspeople, showing how they thought about technical novelty, their distinctive areas of expertise, and ways they could coordinate their efforts. In doing so, Jones argues that the conceptions of creativity and making they exhibited are often more incisive—and more honest—than those that dominate our current legal, political, and aesthetic culture.
In Reckoning with Matter, Matthew L. Jones draws on the remarkably extensive and well-preserved records of the quest to explore the concrete processes involved in imagining, elaborating, testing, and building calculating machines. He explores the writings of philosophers, engineers, and craftspeople, showing how they thought about technical novelty, their distinctive areas of expertise, and ways they could coordinate their efforts. In doing so, Jones argues that the conceptions of creativity and making they exhibited are often more incisive—and more honest—than those that dominate our current legal, political, and aesthetic culture.
- GenresHistory
336 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 29, 2016
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71 people want to read
About the author
Matthew L. Jones
6 books10 followersMatthew L. Jones is the James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization in the Department of History at Columbia University. He studies the history of science and technology, focused on early modern Europe and on recent information technologies. A Guggenheim Fellow for 2012-13 and a Mellon New Directions fellow for 2012-15, he is writing on book on computing and state surveillance of communications, and is working on Data Mining: The Critique of Artificial Reason, 1963-2005, a historical and ethnographic account of “big data,” its relation to statistics and machine learning, and its growth as a fundamental new form of technical expertise in business and scientific research.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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September 3, 2022Unfortunately started to bore me after a hundred pages so I just decided to read whatever seemed interesting.
I think I've garnered a few insights from this regardless, in how Babbage, Leibniz, Pascal, and one little sister of mine are likely to say that whatever they were doing is pretty much the most important thing ever and all credit goes to them and noone else (evidentially maidenless behaviour).
The book does what it professes to well enough, which is funny because it's about artifacts that failed expectation (not that it was even fully created at times), and goes on to show social, legal, and philosophical matters that go along with the creation of calculating machines, exciting.
I think I've garnered a few insights from this regardless, in how Babbage, Leibniz, Pascal, and one little sister of mine are likely to say that whatever they were doing is pretty much the most important thing ever and all credit goes to them and noone else (evidentially maidenless behaviour).
The book does what it professes to well enough, which is funny because it's about artifacts that failed expectation (not that it was even fully created at times), and goes on to show social, legal, and philosophical matters that go along with the creation of calculating machines, exciting.
January 25, 2022
This is a focused academic history looking at the efforts by various savants, philosophers and mechanicians to develop calculating machines in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The focus of the book is on the relation ship between the designers and builders on the one hand and how they related their work to government and the intellectual society of the time. Themes include the complex process of innovation and invention that involves not only abstract ideas but tacit knowledge of those who work with materials and trial and error.
The book is structure diachronically starting with the work of Pascal but with each chapter having a section at the end called the carry where the work of Charles Babbage in the 19th century is discussed. The question of how to achieve a reliable, robust and efficient mechanical carry is one of the recurrent questions of the book. The book looks at a larger cultural, intellectual and economic history of these machines but also in some cases gets into some detail as to their function, but perhaps not as much as those more interested in understanding their mechanical function might appreciate. The final chapter attempts to synthesize the ideas brought up in the previous chapters and open onto broader vistas about the nature of innovation and thought itself.
The book is fairly thorough in its use of archival sources and ambitious in the intellectual ground it covers. I find the arguments interesting if not always convincing. Some might find it a bit speculative and abstract at times.
This ebook functioned fine on my e-reader.
The book is structure diachronically starting with the work of Pascal but with each chapter having a section at the end called the carry where the work of Charles Babbage in the 19th century is discussed. The question of how to achieve a reliable, robust and efficient mechanical carry is one of the recurrent questions of the book. The book looks at a larger cultural, intellectual and economic history of these machines but also in some cases gets into some detail as to their function, but perhaps not as much as those more interested in understanding their mechanical function might appreciate. The final chapter attempts to synthesize the ideas brought up in the previous chapters and open onto broader vistas about the nature of innovation and thought itself.
The book is fairly thorough in its use of archival sources and ambitious in the intellectual ground it covers. I find the arguments interesting if not always convincing. Some might find it a bit speculative and abstract at times.
This ebook functioned fine on my e-reader.
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November 3, 2017510.284 J782 2016
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews