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Between the catastrophic flood of the Tiber River in 1557 and the
death of the "engineering pope" Sixtus V in 1590, the city of Rome
was transformed by intense activity involving building construction
and engineering projects of all kinds. Using hundreds of archival
documents and primary sources, Engineering the Eternal City
explores the processes and people involved in these infrastructure
projects--sewers, bridge repair, flood prevention, aqueduct
construction, the building of new, straight streets, and even the
relocation of immensely heavy ancient Egyptian obelisks that Roman
emperors had carried to the city centuries before. This portrait of
an early modern Rome examines the many conflicts, failures, and
successes that shaped the city, as decision-makers tried to control
not only Rome's structures and infrastructures but also the people
who lived there. Taking up visual images of the city created during
the same period--most importantly in maps and urban
representations, this book shows how in a time before the
development of modern professionalism and modern bureaucracies,
there was far more wide-ranging conversation among people of
various backgrounds on issues of engineering and infrastructure
than there is in our own times. Physicians, civic leaders, jurists,
cardinals, popes, and clerics engaged with painters, sculptors,
architects, printers, and other practitioners as they discussed,
argued, and completed the projects that remade Rome.
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.
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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