Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830

Information is often characterized as facts that float effortlessly across time and space. But before the nineteenth century, information was seen as a process that included a set of skills enacted through media on a daily basis. How, why, and where were these mediated facts and skills learned? Concentrating on manuscripts created by students in Scotland between 1700 and 1830, Matthew Daniel Eddy argues that notebooks functioned as workshops where notekeepers learned to judge the accuracy, utility, and morality of the data they encountered. He shows that, in an age preoccupied with “enlightened” values, the skills and materials required to make and use notebooks were not simply aids to reason―they were part of reason itself.