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.
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