Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2017

Aesthetics of Universal Knowledge

Palgrave Macmillan
  • Offers a very interdisciplinary approach, bringing together philosophers, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, technical experts, and artists.
  • Includes illustrative visuals.
  • Confronts central questions of today’s global condition: What are the technologies, myths, and aesthetic styles for depicting and realizing knowledge of the universe and universal knowledge.

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxi
  2. Text and Context: Genius Loci (A Preface)

    • Pasquale Gagliardi
    Pages 1-9
  3. Introduction

    • Simon Schaffer
    Pages 11-28
  4. Visions: How Aesthetics and Museology Affect the Ways in Which Worlds can be Shown and Known

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-29
    2. Re-visioning the World: Mapping the Lithosphere

      • Adam Lowe, Jerry Brotton
      Pages 31-51
    3. Architects of Knowledge

      • Pierre Chabard
      Pages 53-76
    4. Pictorialism (Prelude and Fugue)

      • Cheryce von Xylander
      Pages 77-113
  5. Worlds: How the Performance of Cosmologies can Change the Way the Moral History of the World is Told and Understood

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 135-135
    2. Cosmopragmatics and Petabytes

      • John Tresch
      Pages 137-168
    3. Gaia or Knowledge without Spheres

      • Bruno Latour
      Pages 169-201
    4. Mapping Dark Matter and the Venice Paradox

      • David Turnbull
      Pages 203-231
  6. Economies: How Different Models of Knowledge and Their Contents Matter to Politics and Society

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 233-233
    2. The Web, Google, and Cosmograms

      • Steve Crossan
      Pages 235-247
    3. Rhetoric, Economics, and Nature

      • Deirdre N. McCloskey
      Pages 249-261
    4. Lodestar

      • Richard Powers
      Pages 263-271

About this book

Born out of a major international dialogue held at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, Italy, this collection of essays presents innovative and provocative arguments about the claims of universal knowledge schemes and the different aesthetic and material forms in which such claims have been made and executed. Contributors take a close look at everything from religious pilgrimages, museums, and maps of the world, to search engines and automated GPS.


Current obsessions in information technology, communications theory, and digital culture often concern the value and possibility of a grand accumulation of universally accessible forms of knowledge: total libraries, open data bases, ubiquitous computing, and ‘smart’ technologies. These obsessions have important social and philosophical origins, and they raise profound questions about the very nature of knowledge and its organization. This volume’s contributors draw on the histories of maps and of encyclopedias, worldviews and visionary collections, to make sense of the crucial relation between the way the world is known and how it might be displayed and transformed. 


Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of History & Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Simon Schaffer

  • Department of History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    John Tresch

  • Secretary General, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venezia, Italy

    Pasquale Gagliardi

About the editors

Simon Schaffer is Professor of History of Science at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of La fabrique des sciences modernes and the coeditor of The Material Cultures of Enlightenment Arts and Sciences.


John Tresch is Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is the author of The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon, among other works.



Pasquale Gagliardi, former Professor of Sociology of Organizations at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, is now Secretary General of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, Italy. He is the author of Symbols & Artifacts. Views of the Corporate Landscape and Le imprese come culture, among other books.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access