Mechanism: A Visual, Lexical, and Conceptual History
Recommended by 1 person on the record.
Bertoloni Meli has read, seemingly, absolutely everything, in multiple languages, and can move skillfully and insightfully from historiographic debates about "the mechanization of the world picture" to contemporary ideas in the philosophy of science about explanation by mechanisms to the details of how ligature of arteries were drawn in anatomical texts, and what this tells us about how doctors' understanding of what ligatures did changed. All of this is done with very graceful writing and elegantly-chosen illustrations.
on bactra.org · 31 Dec 2021