Description: A beautifully illustrated argument that reveals notebooks as extraordinary paper machines that transformed knowledge on the page and in the mind.
We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was seen as a process, as a set of skills enacted on a daily basis. How, why, and where were these skills learned? Concentrating on Scottish students living during the long eighteenth century, this book argues that notebooks were paper machines and that notekeeping was a capability-building exercise that enabled young notekeepers to mobilize everyday handwritten and printed forms of material and visual media in a way that empowered them to judge and enact the enlightened principles they encountered in the classroom. Covering a rich selection of material ranging from simple scribbles to intricate watercolor diagrams, the book reinterprets John Locke's comparison of the mind to a blank piece of paper, the tabula rasa. Although one of the most recognizable metaphors of the British Enlightenment, scholars seldom consider why it was so successful for those who used it. Each chapter uses one core notekeeping skill to reveal the fascinating world of material culture that enabled students in the arts, sciences, and humanities to transform the tabula rasa metaphor into a dynamic cognitive model. Starting in the home, moving to schools, and ending with universities, the book reconstructs the relationship between media and the mind from the bottom up. It reveals that the cognitive skills required to make and use notebooks were not simply aids to reason; rather, they were part of reason itself.Brief description: Matthew Daniel Eddy is professor and chair in the history and philosophy of science at Durham University, UK. He is the author and editor of numerous works on the cultural history of Britain and its former empire.
Review Quotes: "Roughly fifteen pages into taking notes on Eddy's extraordinary Media and the Mind, I realized that the very practice this book unveils was in effect at my fingertips and right before my eyes. I was doing what Eddy describes almost by habit. My notes, his book, and this review, are best described as 'paper machines.' I say best described because what's so fascinating about the work done in Eddy's text renders explicit and visible, maybe for the first time, what goes missing when we read written works and create them. What's missing is 'work, ' which is defined here as an active and generative process, rather than a text in some static sense. . . . There is lots to learn and even more to enjoy in Media and the Mind."-- "Eighteenth-Century Scotland"