Samuel Hartlib and the commonwealth of learning

Abstract

Samuel Hartlib role was as an 'instrument' to render it public, and thereby of benefit to all. Technologia, the disposition of the arts and sciences in general, was the information science of the first half of the seventeenth century, the study of knowledge systems in the context of how we know what we know, and how we convey it to others. Hartlib described the technology thus: 'Hee aimes by it to gather All the Authors, their Notions or Axiomes and their whole discurses. It explains why Hartlib's London itineraries took him to the instrument makers of the city, the Deptford dockyards, the Rotherhithe 'glass-house', or the Kiiffler dye-works. Harold Love has already examined the nature and significance of scribal networks and scribal publication, describing Hartlib as one of the 'too few writers [who] published extensively in both media. It explained his interest in recipes for ink, new ways of blotting paper and new writing pens.

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