The Enlightenment seems to be mostly about the formation of
communication systems (the same systems that not much later just become
extensions of the Medieval systems of power). Here I am defining system
broadly—a network formed by affinity spaces essentially (to borrow from games
scholar James Gee). As Bizzel and Herzberg note in their introduction to John
Locke “complex ideas are formed by the connections among simple ideas” (815).
While this is just a network of thought, it’s the connections that fascinate
me. Locke, Vico, and the scientists of the Enlightenment are concerned with
connecting and synthesizing their thoughts through language and reflection. In
networking these thoughts, new ideas are derived at through synthesis.
I guess what I’m concerned with here is
relating (networking) the larger societal movements with the ones going on in
the heads of the Enlightenment folks. As print became a dominant force, it
would be easy to paint the Enlightenment as a panacea of shared knowledge—a
lofty notion Ortelius floats when devising his atlas (Eisenstein, 85). But the
connections between ideas effect more than knowledge. Eisenstein notes that the
advent of print brought “together intellectual and commercial activities which
reinforced each other and thus created an especially powerful, almost
irresistible drive” (75). The result is aptly described as “a knowledge
explosion” (83)—a term fitting something that happens so quickly and has so
much potential to clear a path or destroy or both. Print created new
relationships which I examine here in the next paragraph; however, print itself
became a system that muddied how we arrive at truth. For science and
religion—two systems engaged in the pursuit of Truth—print acted for and
against them.
In
the later chapters of Eisenstein’s book, she notes how print put religion into
conversation with science. The relationship, despite some commonly-held
beliefs, was not entirely antagonistic. Some science set out to “prove” or
build onto religious ideas. Eisenstein poetically refers to this as “spreading
God’s words” versus “deciphering His handiwork” (298). Scientific notions could
be shared through dessemination, negating the need for the “wandering scholar”
(47). On a darker note, print also facilitated the “output of polemical tracts
to sway opinion,” a key tactic used by both the Catholic and Protestant
Churches. What I see here is the
first effective use of propaganda. (Yes, there had been smearing and rumor
before, but the ethos print lends itself to ideas like “popular opinion” and
“news” in ways orality could not.) And with the dawn of new media and
propaganda (now an old idea), we have the formation of publicity. Venues for
certain types of print become reconsidered, much like Luther’s tacking of
theses to a church door (168). Probably most significant though is the
“deliberate exploitation of the new medium” (170).
Toward
the end of her book, Eisenstein explicitly notes the impact of publicity on
science and religion as well as the effect it had on the relationship between
the two systems. As the Churches grew accustomed and adept to print publicity,
science begins to distrust it. The very thing that put ideas in conversation
becomes something to be feared (298). Repeatedly, Eisenstein uses the word
paradox in describing the print revolution, another fitting term. Perhaps most
paradoxically is the idea she advances early in the book—that “printers not
only compete with rivals and improve on their predecessors. They are able to
improve on themselves” (81). The networking allows for advancement. Yet, the
network formed with and by economies stymies pure growth while being stimulated.
(i.e. The idea that the second edition could improve on the first—a way of
sandbagging knowledge. Ahem, textbooks...)
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