'The Observatory', a new series of short articles on scientific consensus in the 17th century by the NOTCOM ERC Project Team

Discover 'The Observatory', a new series of short experimental & anecdotal articles on scientific consensus in the 17th century by the NOTCOM ERC Project Team

1. Of Making Cloth: Some Epistemological Lessons by Mogens Laerke 

On November 27, 1661, William Petty presented a “history of clothing” at a meeting of the Royal Society as part of a collective endeavour to collect information about various trades.[1] First  asked to “communicate the history of some trade at his own choice” at a society meeting on 16 January, 1661,[2] then commissioned to “offer his thoughts concerning the trade of clothing” 23 January,[3] and repeatedly reminded to complete the task in March, August, and September,[4] Petty finally delivered in November. This brief history includes some forty-five paragraphs systematically recounting the various “operations” that wool undergoes in the fabrication of clothing and descriptions of the “instruments” employed. Operations include sorting, washing, dying, mixing in locks, oiling or sayving, carding, combing, spinning, knitting, twisting, reeling, warping, stiffening, untwisting,  passing through the harness, slaying and knitting together, quilling, burling, scowring, milling, tentering, sheering, cottoning, and pressing, fonding and pressing, fulling, racking, raising, roughing and shorning. Instruments include, among others, the harness, slay, shuttle, wheel and band, spindle, whur and beards, and quill box, swift or tympanum, sheers, boards, and ointment. The paper forms the history of an art in the Baconian sense. Indeed, Bacon’s own “catalogue of particular histories” already included a prospective chapter dedicated to the “History of weaving, and of ancillary skills associated with it.”[5] Petty, it seems, simply set out to write it.

Read the full article on the website of the NOTCOM ERC Project

Illustration: Cornelis Pietersz. Bega, Weaver’s Family. Early 1650s.
Wiki Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bega_Weavers_Family.jpg.