edited by Jean-François Gauvin

Object presented by Ellen Harlizius-Klück during her lecture

Can the mechanical arts teach us anything about early modern natural philosophy? Can we expect the art of weaving, for instance, to possess an epistemic value as significant and wide-ranging as (say) mathematics? This is what Descartes seems to imply in a famous passage found in Rule X of the Regulæ, where he explains that weaving, carpet-making, embroidery and number-games involving arithmetic should be taken as good examples (and exercises) to learn how to look for the most simple of things. For, Descartes continues,
“since nothing in these activities remains hidden and they are totally adapted to human cognitive capacities, they present us in the most distinct way with innumerable instances of order, each one different from the other, yet all regular. Human discernment [sagacitas] consists almost entirely in the proper observance of such order.”
Weaving and mathematics show order, they reveal in truth the foundation of natural philosophical knowledge, i.e. mathesis universalis.
Ellen Harlizius-Klück, a resident scholar at the Deutsches Museum, is currently working on an early 18th-century German book on textile patterns (based on a previous book dated 1677) that demonstrates precisely the orderly fashion (and not the randomness) with which these “threads are interwoven in an infinitely varied pattern,” to quote Descartes again. Her work (and similar analyses done by computer scientists, see: www.handweaving.net) shows that these textile patterns were rationalized in such a way that simple mathematical equations can be derived from the lines and dots printed in the book and destined to guide the weavers’ hands on the mechanical looms. Textile patterns, therefore, were an artisanal form of reason, one that appears to have been noticed by Descartes (and how many others?). Like Einstein’s famous clocks (see Galison), this suggests that weaving was more than just a metaphor for Descartes. As one of the most important industries in early modern Europe—certainly as unavoidable as the coordination of clocks at the turn of the 20th century—mechanical weaving should not be disregarded as a plain and “vulgar” mechanical art, having nothing to do with natural philosophy. Although recent scholars like Pamela Long and Pamela Smith have shown how significant was the “artisanal epistemology” towards the establishment of 17th-century experimental science, few have studied the impact of craftsmanship on “rational” natural philosophers. This forthcoming study by Harlizius-Klück illustrates extremely well in my opinion how much artisans, craftsmanship and early modern savants were often times intricately “interwoven” together.