Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science

by Lorraine Daston (Editor)

Imagine a world without things. There would be nothing to describe, explain, remark on, interpret, or complain about. Without things, we would, in short, stop speaking; we would become as mute as objects are alleged to be. In nine original essays, internationally renowned historians of art and of science seek to understand how objects become charged with significance without losing their gritty materiality. Things That Talk aims to escape the opposition between positivist facts and cultural readings that bifurcates the current historiography of both art and science.

Confronting this impasse from an interdisciplinary perspective, each author singles out one object for close a Bosch drawing, the freestanding column, a Prussian island, soap bubbles, early photographs, glass flowers, Rorschach blots, newspaper clippings, paintings by Jackson Pollock. Each object is revealed to be a node around which meanings accrete thickly.

But not just any what these things are made of and how they are made shape what they can mean. Neither the pure texts of semiotics nor the brute objects of positivism, these things are saturated with cultural significance. Things become talkative when they fuse matter and meaning; they lapse into speechlessness when their matter and meanings no longer mesh.

Each of the nine evocative objects examined in this book had its historical moment, when the match of this thing to that thought seemed irresistible. At such junctures, certain things become objects of fascination, association, and endless consideration. Things That Talk fleetingly realizes the dream of a perfect language, in which words and world merge.

Essays by Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison, Anke te Heesen, Caroline A. Jones, Joseph Leo Koerner, Antoine Picon, Simon Schaffer, Joel Snyder, and M. Norton and Elaine M. Wise.

Genres: History Of Science, Art, Art History, Nonfiction, History

448 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

Lorraine Daston (born June 9, 1951, East Lansing, Michigan)[1] is an American historian of science. Executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, she is considered an authority on Early Modern European scientific and intellectual history. In 1993, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has such a compelling title, and is actually beautifully put together (the illustrations, including series of color plates in the middle, attest to a fair amount of willingness on the part of MIT Press to spend money on the volume). And, of course, a book about things deserves to have pictures of those things, not just prose describing them. So, kudos for that. Unfortunately, however, the prose that does describe the pictures was a disappointment. The introduction leaves the reader with so much hope for this interdisciplinary collaboration, where writers will describe things as diverse as glass flowers, soap bubbles, and Bosch paintings. The former two essays were the best. Lorraine Daston (also the editor) describes the glass flower collection at Harvard and uses their popularity to explore the connections between science and nature in a compelling way. Peter Gallison's contribution on soap bubbles and the way they were mobilized as scientific evidence is equally fascinating, and his attempt to make bubbles a protagonist by writing about them as if they were a person in the tale (e.g. "Bubbles then followed in the footsteps of its maker and went to Europe.") may seem slightly gimmicky, but actually works quite well for his purposes. However, the other 7 selections were far more disappointing, and none of them were as compellingly theoretical as I might have liked. I think the introduction to this volume is well-worth reading, but the individual essays are probably only useful if you have a vested interest in the specific thing they each describe.

[Yasaman Nozari · Rating 5 out of 5]

found some articles fascinating

[Andee Nero · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked that there were a lot of images of the objects, but thought there were a lot of instances where things should have been color when they were B&W or vice versa.
I think this was an interesting idea for a book also, but the essays were so short. The essays also felt a bit disconnected, although they started to pick up steam in the second half, starting with Joel Snyder's inquiry into film and photographic evidence. Throughout the book, however, there were really fantastic instances of material culture in the arts and sciences and they are so extraordinary that I don't think I will forget about them soon, especially the essays on the glass flowers, newspaper clippings (I never thought of it that way!) and Greenberg's formalism.

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was beautiful produced - with plentiful illustration and printed on high quality paper. However, the content of the book disappointed my expectations. Many of the essays were histories centered around a thing, rather than illuminated *through* things. I enjoyed most the essays on bubbles and Harvard's glass flowers.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains some really good essays about how things carry meaning.