Reinventing Knowledge
<p>This is one chapter of a book that argues that knowledge is conditioned by the institutions that produce it: from the "Library" in ancient Alexandria, to the medieval monastary, to the universities that started around 1100, to the "Republic of Letters" beginning around 1500, to the division of knowledge among various disciplines in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the dominance of the "laboratory" in our time. This is the chapter on the laboratory.</p>