Things That Talk ─ Object Lessons from Art and Science

Imagine a world without things. There would be nothing to describe, nothing toexplain, remark, interpret, or complain about. Without things, we would stop speaking; we wouldbecome as mute as things are alleged to be. In nine original essays, internationally renownedhistorians of art and of science seek to understand how objects become charged with significancewithout losing their gritty materiality. True to the particularity of things, each of the essayssingles out one object for close attention: a Bosch drawing, the freestanding column, a Prussianisland, soap bubbles, early photographs, glass flowers, Rorschach blots, newspaper clippings,paintings by Jackson Pollock. Each is revealed to be a node around which meanings accrete thickly.But not just any meanings: what these things are made of and how they are made shape what they canmean. Neither the pure texts of semiotics nor the brute objects of positivism, these things aresaturated with cultural significance. Things become talkative when they fuse matter and meaning;they lapse into speechlessness when their matter and meanings no longer mesh. Each of the nineobjects examined in this book had its historical moment, when the match of this thing to thatthought seemed irresistible. At these junctures, certain things become objects of fascination,association, and endless consideration; they begin to talk. Things that talk fleetingly realize thedream of a perfect language, in which words and world merge.Essays Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison,Anke te Heesen, Caroline A. Jones, Joseph Leo Koerner, Antoine Picon, Simon Schaffer, Joel Snyder,and M. Norton and Elaine M. Wise. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for theHistory of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature,1150-1750 (Zone Books).