The Disenchantment of Skillful Bodies: Early Modern Guilds as Knowledge Communities

Abstract

"This paper will examine the intricate relationship between knowledge and community in a guild context (in early modern Europe) and how this relationship changed at the end of the ancien régime. I will proceed from the assumption that even historians of science and technology who have focused on the cross-overs and mergers between scientific and artisanal knowledge – and have attributed agency to artists and artisans in the coming about of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions – often misapprehend practices related to the knowledge of early modern artisan."