Gimcrack’s Legacy: Sex, Wealth, and the Theater of Experimental Philosophy

Abstract

Experimental philosophy in late seventeenth century depended upon what Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer have famously characterized as that is, gendered figure of authority, gentility, and privilege measured for moral constitution as well as [his] knowledgeability. (1) The modest witness was subject position that emerged in the laboratory itself a disciplined space, where experimental, discursive, and social practices were collectively controlled by competent members. (2) The authenticity of was borne out of performance, policing, and collective agreement, but it also depended upon idea that these practices produced modest witness who merely reflected results from scientific experimentation. (3) While benefits of Shapin and Schaffer's work are multiple, their insights have invited range of reconsiderations, most notably by Donna Haraway. (4) The role of modest witness and rise of experimentalism in general, contends Haraway, generated model of gender difference that Shapin and Schaffer assume existed priori. The scientific was distinguished from laboring (professional) men and women more generally by means of his intellectual modesty, that key practice of experimentalism, and this configuration exposes experimentalism as dependent upon this gender-in-the-making. The theory of modest witness, as understood by Shapin and Schaffer, and as modified by Haraway, significantly expands our understanding of culture of seventeenth-century experimentalism and its development into modern scientific practice. But concerns what ends up being winner of history--it is source of modern scientific objectivity--and fails to account for variant identities and engagements with experimental philosophy outside of confines of Royal Society. In particular, alternative discourse of virtuoso emerged alongside, historically, modest witness, and was its cultural and ideological antithesis, though some seventeenth-century skeptics suspected that modest witness might actually devolve into virtuoso. If modest witness factored out human agency and acted as objects' transparent spokesmen, (5) then virtuoso was defined by his or her inability to overcome prejudice and desires, speaking for himself or herself rather than for object, thus illuminating cultural implications and potential of popular scientific practice. The term virtuoso, first recorded in English in 1598, was not closely allied with natural philosophy until 1640s; by 1660s, it connoted an exclusively scientific interest. (6) As with modest witness, to be virtuoso one needed wealth and leisure (as one scholar notes, he is gentleman (7)). Also, virtuoso was motivated by desire for reputation and social standing, even snob-appeal. (8) The virtuoso originally had positive associations, referring to man of learning, though once Royal Society acquired its first charter in 1662, meaning of virtuoso quickly transformed into person engaged in futile and indiscriminate study. (9) Virtuosos were also associated with growing marketplace for optical and other scientific instruments, as well as consumer desire for public science manifest in numerous print publications and lectures. (10) Scientific instruments were considered by some to be luxury good, even plaything for England's wealthy and fashionable or toy for ladies. (11) Of course, experimental philosophers such as virtuoso were, by this point, often considered amateurs and were thus not necessarily subject to dictates of performance and collective agreement authorized by Royal Society. But contrast is revealing: if Royal Society's modest witness is ideally figure of authority, gentility, and privilege, then theatrical virtuoso exposes ways in which practice of experimental philosophy is ideologically biased and socially grounded. …