Science without Leisure

Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732

Harun Küçük

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780822987109
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Science History
• Index: History

Science in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Istanbul, Harun Küçük argues, was without leisure, a phenomenon spurred by the hyperinflation a century earlier when scientific texts all but disappeared from the college curriculum and inflation reduced the wages of professors to one-tenth of what they were in the sixteenth century. It was during this tumultuous period that philosophy and theory, the more leisurely aspects of naturalism—and the pursuit of "knowledge for knowledge's sake"—vanished altogether from the city. But rather than put an end to science in Istanbul, this economic crisis was transformative, turning science into a practical matter, into something one learned through apprenticeship and provided as a service. In Science without Leisure, Küçük reveals how Ottoman science, when measured against familiar narratives of the Scientific Revolution, was remarkably far less scholastic and philosophical and far more cosmopolitan and practical. His book explains why as practical naturalists deployed natural knowledge to lucrative ends without regard for scientific theories, science in the Ottoman Empire over the long term ultimately became the domain of physicians, bureaucrats, and engineers rather than of scholars and philosophers.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Naming Conventions, Translation, and Transliteration
• Introduction. After Science: Ottoman Practical Naturalism
• Chapter 1. Istanbul and Her Sciences
• Chapter 2. Istanbul’s Medreses in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
• Chapter 3. The Ottoman Scholastic Field and the Sciences
• Chapter 4. The Calendar: Copernicus for Tax Collectors
• Chapter 5. The Recipe: An Annotated Chronology of New Medicine in the Seventeenth Century
• Chapter 6. Distinction: A Social Critique of Scientific Taste
• Chapter 7. Like Ants on a Watermelon: Practical Naturalists Encounter Philosophy
• Chapter 8. Maritime, Mercantile, Sacred: Empiricism and the Compass
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1. Extract from Tezkireci İbrahim, Secencelü’l-Eflak fi Gayeti’l-İdrak [Mirror of the Heavens at the Edge of Understanding] (1662)
• Appendix 2. Extract from İbrahim Müteferrika, Füyuzat-ı Mıknatısiye [Magnetic Effluvia] (1732)
• Appendix 3. Extract from İbrahim Müteferrika, Usülü’l-Hikem fi Nizamü’l-Ümem [Foundations of Government in Various Social Orders]
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index