TEORIE V!DY / THEORY OF SCIENCE / XXXV / 2013 / 2 ////// tematická studie / thematic articles ////////////////////// INSTRUMENTS AS PLAYTHINGS: AN ALTERNATIVE METHODOLOGY FOR THE STUDY OF SCIENTIFIC ARTEFACTS Abstract: ! is article proposes that thinking of scienti" c instruments as playthings or philosophical toys o# ers a method for looking at the ways in which we learn from made things and from the act of making in investigating the world. Rather than approaching artefacts as stable objects, de" nable and categorisable in terms of their function, this method puts forward the instability and mobility of artefacts on several levels: in terms of their movements between hands, social contexts and systems of knowledge, in terms of their physical articulations and of their changing functions, and in terms of the % ows and processes of materials at work within and through them. Keywords: historical a# ordance; scienti" c playthings; thinking things; variant invariance Přístroje jako hračky: alternativní metodologie výzkumu vědeckých artefaktů Abstrakt: Uvažovat o vědeckých přístrojích jako hračkách či " loso" ckých hračkách nabízí speci" ckou metodu zkoumání způsobů, jimiž se z vytvořených věcí i způsobů jejich vytváření učíme při zkoumání světa. Nepřistupuje k artefaktům jako ke stabilním předmětům, de" novatelným a klasi" kovatelným na základě jejich funkce, nýbrž zdůrazňuje nestabilitu a mobilitu artefaktů na několika rovinách: jejich pohybu mezi rukama, sociálními kontexty a systémy vědění; jejich fyzické artikulace a proměn funkcí těchto artikulací; materiálních procesů působících v nich i jejich prostřednictvím. Klíčová slova: historická afordance; vědecké hračky; myšlení věci; variantní invariance LINA HAKIM 34 Hazlemere Court 26 Palace Road London SW2 3NH United Kingdom email / lina@matchbox! ight.com 198 Lina Hakim I begin this article by elaborating an understanding of playthings from multi-disciplinary perspectives that consider their role in the reciprocal constitution of self and world. I then explain how the resistant malleability of playthings, their participation in the explorative and expansive play of thought and the attention to technology and materials during play lead a consideration of scienti" c instruments into the realm of playthings. I use this to argue that regarding instruments as playthings allows for an ecological approach to artefacts that is more concerned with (embodied) comprehension than knowledge and that takes into account their varying roles and meanings. # is allows me to introduce the notion of 'historical a$ ordance' to relate the evolution in what an instrument o$ ers to perception, action and understanding. I " nally % esh out this methodology and apply it to the Crookes radiometer as a case study to demonstrate how thinking of instruments as playthings o$ ers scope for 'tuning in' to them. Playthings In his 1987 presidential address on "Scienti" c Toys", science historian Gerard L'Estrange Turner describes the importance of homo ludens when "considering how human beings acquire knowledge".1 # e way in which yesterday's science so o& en becomes today's recreation does not make it any less scienti" c. Indeed, much scienti" c, and other, knowledge is absorbed consciously or unconsciously through play.2 Turner's argument is that learning through play has always been essential to "discovering how the natural world works", which is to say scienti" c understanding, and he illustrates this through an overview of philosophical apparatus and demonstration instruments from the seventeenth and eighteenth century that passed into recreational use in the 19th century and became toys in the twentieth. In "Cognitive Objects", psychologist Robin A. Hodgkin, similarly concerned with the relationship between scienti" c discovery and play, tries to work out the nature of this connection.3 Building on Jean Piaget's 1 Gerard L'Estrange TURNER, "Presidential Address: 'Scienti" c Toys'." British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 20, 1987, p. 377 (377–398). 2 TURNER, "Scienti" c Toys," p. 384. 3 Robin A. HODGKIN, "Cognitive Objects." Oxford Review of Education, vol. 14, 1988, no. 3 (353–362). See also Robin A. HODGKIN, "Making Space for Meaning." Polanyiana, vol. 6, 1997, no. 2 (55–71). 199 Instruments as Playthings framework in developmental psychology and Seymour Papert's theories of cognitive science, he argues that "the key questions" in order to understand this connection [...] are not to do with a child's exposure to mechanical ideas in toys, but rather with the many-sidedness and depth of his own involvement in play. Here is the seed bed not only of active science but also of technical cra" skills.4 ! e looping structure of play Hodgkin describes a semi-cyclical and recurrent process of creativity that he visualises as "a looping structure originating in play", which he also uses to show the way in which a plaything oscillates between being toy, tool and symbol; its nature changing as a result of the alternating possibilities of progressing by skill-developing practice on one hand or of proceeding by exploratory "groping and experimenting movements" on the other.5 His contention is that this cycle is common to all processes of discovery, and that the "cognitive object" or "generative thing-idea" that it involves acts as a "transitional object".6 # is term was introduced by psychologist D. W. Winnicott to refer to a child's $ rst "not-me" possession, which, he contends, enables a mediation between the child's inner and outer world through inhabiting "an intermediate area of experiencing, to which inner reality and external life both contribute", that is by being part of both the subjective and what is objectively perceived.7 Such objects, according to Winnicott, exemplify the ways in which humans negotiate their relation to the world: their task is to keep inner and outer reality separate but interrelated.8 Describing archetypes of interaction with "transitional objects" in Playing and Reality, he further suggests that "thinking, or fantasying, gets linked up with these functional experiences".9 # is is the insight that Hodgkin picks up on in his 4 HODGKIN, "Cognitive Objects", p.356. It is important to note that while Hodgkin picks up on the revaluation of concrete reasoning in Piaget, he does not cast it, as the latter does, as an inferior stage in the progression towards formal or abstract thinking: for Hodgkin the two modes of thinking always alternate and, moreover, concrete objects play a signi$ cant part in both. 5 Ibid., p. 357. 6 Ibid., p. 359. 7 Donald W. WINNICOTT, Playing and Reality. London – New York: Routledge 2008, p. 3. 8 # is also explains how the prospect of the loss of an object is always a part of the love one has for it. 9 WINNICOTT, Playing and Reality, p. 5. 200 text when he speaks of the "many-sidedness and depth" of involvement in play. Playthings move between the status of tool and symbol, which means that, like transitional objects, they are both sensory and abstract. Playing with things is fundamentally a mediating between material existence and mental operations, a form of search that is essential to science, technology and cra" . While I generally agree with this statement, my concern here is not with the broad relationship between play and science. What I would like to draw on instead are aspects of Hodgkin's description of playthings, which, I will argue, o# er a useful tool for thinking of scienti$ c artefacts in a way that takes into account, amongst other things, their varying roles and meanings in a phenomenological/ecological framework. Playthings are objects for thought and action that change their 'nature' in a looping movement, which paradoxically both results from and enables a reciprocal and constitutive interaction between self and world. A plaything, rather than being de$ ned by a function, embraces varying roles, switches in the categories that it belongs to and is even prone to changes in what constitutes it, all the while still remaining, in some sense, itself. How does this varying invariance operate? What kind of understanding does it present? What kind of engagement does it require? How does it involve the thing that it puts into play? Familiar and poetic substance In a short essay on "Toys" in his Mythologies, literary theorist Roland Barthes laments complicated "French toys" with which a child can only engage as a user or owner, and opposes them to simple playthings, such a set of blocks, which provide "a very di# erent kind of learning". 10 With these "unre$ ned" playthings, [...] the child does not in any way create meaningful objects, it matters little to him whether they have an adult name; the actions he performs are not those of a user but those of a demiurge. He creates forms which walk, which roll, he creates life, not property: objects now act by themselves, they are no longer an inert and complicated material in his hand.11 10 Roland BARTHES, "Toys." In: Roland BARTHES, Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. London: Vintage 2000, p. 54 (53–55). 11 Ibid., p. 54. Lina Hakim 201 In describing playthings coming to life in this way, Barthes is not implying an animistic understanding of toys, but rather identifying a particular kind of contact with the world – one that they o" er in the shape of an object which both yields to the player's desires and whims and at the same time informs them. # ese playthings provide what he describes as "a familiar and poetic substance", something simple that can be deployed intricately and that keeps child and environment in close contact.12 When built using "an ideal material", such as wood for instance, they "can last a long time, live with the child, alter little by little the relations between the object and hand".13 It is an attentive and caring relationship that evokes the emotional attachment to "transitional objects" and that likewise develops a sensitive and enquiring approach to the world. It is moreover an immersive experience that understands the need for taking one's time, for putting time into things. # e movement it entails, as Hodgkin has suggested, is a loop rather than a straight line: its objective is not to complete a journey or to get somewhere, but rather to cover as much space as it can while retracing itself, to spread out. It is, in that sense, spatial, whence both Hodgkin and Winnicott's reference to an intermediate space or privileged zone of play. Like the loop, it recursively goes back and forth without crossing over itself, is concerned with versatility rather than economy and has for principle an extension of possibilities, a spread in testing them out. # e actions it involves are "those of a demiurge", because they are a kind of composition, a creative act that plays out the di" erent possibilities of the thing put into play. Playing with a thing is a playing out of its a" ordances, and the ideal plaything o" ers a wide range of a" ordance, has a lot of "play". ! inking things In "A Philosophy of Fidgets", cultural theorist Steven Connor re$ ects on the things that seem to call for such looping actions and suggests that they might embody thinking, make it palpable: # e deeper secret of these objects is perhaps that they are the necessary accessories to thought. Perhaps they are forms of thought themselves. [...] It is as though we were compelled to act out literally the meaning of the word 're$ ection', from re-! ectare to bend back on oneself. Just as we recruit our own bodies 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. Instruments as Playthings 202 for these doubling enactments of our own re! ective work, so we requisition objects to join the ! exing play of thought.14 Connor describes such playthings as "accentuating rather than accelerating devices", as instruments "for pervading rather than progress".15 " ey are necessary for thought because they give shape to the operations of thinking, they o# er thinking an external object with which to think of itself. " ey are what he calls 'thinking things', "the kinds of thing that draw, drain and detain our thinking, and that make thinking accessible as a kind of thing":16 [T]hinking as an adjectival participle and thinking as the name of an action – thus 'things that are thinking' and 'thinking about things'. [...] So thinking things constitute a surrogate way of thinking about the things that thinking takes to itself in order to think about the way it thinks about things...17 "" inking things" are the things with which we interrogate both the world and our thinking about the world, they are the things of, through and in which we think the world. Playthings are what we think of in the absorption and intent that playing with them requires. " ey are what we think through when we enrol them in our exploratory activities. " ey are what we think within when they come to stand for the thinking about the world that is thought through them as an extension of us into the world and of them as a part of the world exterior to us. " e plaything, then, shares its play loop with "the ! exing play of thought": both join in this ! ickering between thing and thought, between object and subject, that reciprocally constitutes them both.18 14 Steven CONNOR, A Philosophy of Fidgets [online], talk given at the Liverpool Biennial Touched Talks, 17 Feb 2010. 2010. Available at: <http://www.stevenconnor.com/% dgets/> [cit. 15. 7. 2013], p. 3. 15 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 16 Steven CONNOR, " inking " ings [online], plenary lecture given at ESSE-9, the 9th annual conference of the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), Aarhus, Denmark, 25 August 2008 and as the Textual Practice lecture, University of Sussex, 14 October 2009. 2008–2009. Available at: <http://www.stevenconnor.com/thinkingthings/> [cit. 15. 7. 2013], p. 4. 17 Ibid., p. 22. 18 CONNOR, "A Philosophy of Fidgets," p. 3. Lina Hakim 203 Evocative objects ! is reciprocal constitution of subject and object in play is what motivates essayist Walter Benjamin to call for a "philosophical classi# cation of toys" that would "penetrate to the reality [and] to the conceptual understanding of toys" in several essays on playthings and on "the mysteries of the world of play" into which they lead:19 We experiment early on with basic rhythms that proclaim themselves in their simplest forms in these sorts of games with inanimate objects. Or rather, these are the rhythms in which we # rst gain possession of ourselves.20 Playthings are what sociologist of science Sherry Turkle calls "evocative objects" to emphasise "the inseparability of thought and feeling in our relationship to things". As she puts it, "[w]e think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with".21 As both a$ ective companions and "provocations to thought", playthings are at the origin of the "basic rhythms" through which our emotional and intellectual lives are composed.22 ! e question then is: how does this work? What makes playthings evocative? In "! e Cultural History of Toys", Benjamin cautions against the common "assumption that the imaginative content of a child's toys is what determines his playing; whereas in reality the opposite is true."23 A child wants to pull something, and so he becomes a horse; he wants to play with sand, and so he turns into a baker; he wants to hide, and so he turns into a robber or policeman.24 Here are again the "actions of a demiurge", the creative acts that put things into play; but Benjamin's description reveals an additional and important aspect of this enrolling of things: it is speci# c to what each thing o$ ers to be 19 Walter BENJAMIN, "! e Cultural History of Toys." In: JENNINGS, M. W. – BULLOCK, M. – EILAND, H. – SMITH, G. (eds.), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol.2, Part 2, 1927-1930. Cambridge – London, Belknap Press 2005, pp. 115–116 (113–116). See also Walter BENJAMIN, "Old Toys: ! e Toy Exhibition at the Märkisches Museum." In: Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, pp. 98–112. 20 Walter BENJAMIN, "Toys and Play: Marginal Notes on a Monumental Work." In: Walter Benjamin Selected Writings, p. 120 (117–121). 21 Sherry TURKLE, "Introduction: ! e ! ings ! at Matter." In: TURKLE, S. (ed.), Evocative Objects: ! ings We ! ink With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2007, p. 5 (3–10). 22 Ibid. 23 BENJAMIN, "! e Cultural History Of Toys," p. 115. 24 Ibid., p. 115. Instruments as Playthings 204 done with it, to its a! ordance. " e child does indeed determine the imaginative content of a plaything, but she does so in recognition of and in reaction to the possibilities for action that the plaything presents to her. A toy carriage is pull-able, and in pulling it the child may imagine herself a horse drawing the carriage; sand can be wet into doughy mud and be kneaded, allowing the child to impersonate a baker; but it can also be poured and have her picture herself an hourglass, or be used to build sandcastles making her a kind of architect. It cannot, however, be pulled, or tied, or folded. " e imaginative content of playthings is determined by the child but, it also always results of the a! ordances of the thing for the child: it is part of a particular moment or circumstance and is linked to a desire or query, to something someone wants to do that it presents itself as useful for. " is can range from wanting "to pull something", through testing what can be done something and what purposes it can serve, to looking to represent something, or most typically an intermingled combination of several of these. Ecology and the theory of a! ordance " e way in which the perception of things is situated and they way in which they are apprehended as possibility for action are the founding principles of James J. Gibson's ecological approach to perception and of his theory of a! ordance that the methodology I am proposing builds on. In Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Gibson introduces his ecological understanding of the environment as what a! ords animate life, that is, as what supports perception and behaviour, which are in turn reciprocally related to the ecosystem.25 He explains his understanding of ecological reality thus: " e world of physical reality does not consist of meaningful things. " e world of ecological reality, as I have been trying to describe it, does. If what we perceived were the entities of physics and mathematics, meanings would have to be imposed on them. But if what we perceive are the entities of environmental science, their meanings can be discovered.26 Gibson's ecological theory describes things in terms of their organismindexed signi$ cance in relation to living forms as well as in terms of their ecological (shared) objectivity, both of which are understood to be in dis25 James J. GIBSON, ! e Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. New Jersey – London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 1979. 26 Ibid., p. 33. Lina Hakim 205 continuous and reciprocal (animal-environment) change. Based on this understanding, he elaborates the theory of "a! ordances", a term he uses to describes "what [the environment] o! ers animals, what it provides or furnishes, for good or ill", that is, any opportunity or danger within an organism's environment.27 He further insists that an a! ordance is neither a subjective nor an objective property or "could be both" and that it "points both ways, to the environment and to the observer".28 # ings, then, have a! ordances de$ ned by the possibilities for action on a particular environment. # is can be thought of as "-ables' as in "movable", "see-through-able", "touchable", "smell-able", "sit-upon-able etc". 29 A! ordances are, moreover, perceived in relation to the organism in question: di! erent things a! ord different meanings and actions to di! erent organisms.30 Gibson $ nally notes that, rather than qualities or properties say, a! ordances are always what we $ rst pay attention to in things.31 Following Gibson's ecological framework, a! ordances, availability, access and the particulars of a given situation play an essential part in the enrolment of a thing in enquiring play. It nevertheless seems that some objects are more evocative than others, that some things are better at leading into "real living play".32 So what then has the a! ordance of an ideal plaything? What possesses the resistant malleability required for the exploratory looping of play? What constitutes, in Barthes' words, a "familiar poetic substance" and is that demanded from a plaything? Clarity of materials and technology Like Barthes, Benjamin bemoans complex toys and those "based on imitation", which he says lead away from authentic playthings and from "real 27 James J. GIBSON, "# e # eory of A! ordances." In: SHAW, R. – BRAUSFORD, J. (eds.), Perceiving, Acting and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology. New York – Toronto – London – Sydney: John Wiley & Sons 1977, p. 68 (67–82). 28 GIBSON, ! e Ecological Approach, p. 129. 29 M. T. TURVEY, "Perception: # e Ecological Approach." In: NADEL, L. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. London: Nature Publishing Group 2002, p. 540 (538–541). See also dra% article Claudia CARELLO and M. T. TURVEY, ! e Ecological Approach to Perception [online]. Available at: <ione.psy.uconn.edu/~corr/EncCogSci.pdf> [cit. 14. 8. 2013]. 30 GIBSON, "# e # eory of A! ordances," p. 79. 31 GIBSON, ! e Ecological Approach, p. 75. 32 BENJAMIN, "# e Cultural History of Toys," p. 116. Instruments as Playthings 206 living play".33 Noting how "chaste" children are in their use of materials and how interested they are in the construction and modi! cation of toys in play, he proposes that a "particular clarity" is required that makes genuine playthings:34 In the case of toys simplicity is to be found not in their shapes but in the transparent nature of the manufacturing process. Hence, it cannot be judged according to an abstract canon but di# ers in di# erent places, and is less a matter of formal criteria, because a number of methods of processing – carving, in particular – can give free rein to their imagination without becoming in the least incomprehensible. In the same way, the genuine and self-evident simplicity of toys was a matter of technology not formalist consideration.35 Benjamin, like Barthes, insists that: "however uni! ed and unambiguous the material is, the more it seems to embrace the possibility of a multitude of ! gures of the most varied sort".36 But he suggests that the required simplicity is not only to be found in an object's material composition: technological transparency is also essential. Structure and operation must, like materials, be accessible and intimately grasped in order for them to be e# ectively deployed. It is the clarity of the processes at work in an object that determine its simplicity and its consequent creative potential both practically and allegorically. In the same way that we can only use words to their full poetic or theoretical potential once we've become familiar with the way they work, so can we only put artefacts maximally to play when their technology is "self-evident" to us. Benjamin, also like Barthes, seems to be giving primacy to wood as a material, but his reason for that is not something to do with an inherent quality of the substance: it is rather to do with the "methods of processing" that it lends itself to, the particular comprehensibility of carving as a method of making. A genuine plaything necessitates an intimate understanding of its inner workings by the person engaging with it. While it is easy for most people to agree with Benjamin that carving is in that sense particularly easy to understand, perhaps we should keep in mind that comprehension is in the eye of the beholder. A technology that seems alien to a person might be 33 Ibid., pp.115–6. He writes that "imitation [...] is at home in the playing, not in the plaything," p. 116. 34 BENJAMIN, "Toys and Play," p. 119. 35 Ibid., p.119. 36 BENJAMIN, "$ e Cultural History of Toys," p. 115. Lina Hakim 207 another's favoured plaything; a medium that seems opaque to a person could open up a world of possibilities to another. Skill " is account of playthings puts forward the way in which making things and interacting with them are interrelated rather than opposed practices, and the fact that both are based on an attentive engagement of human beings with elements of their environment. Artefacts are made things and should be thought of as the outcome of the skilful engagement of a maker with elements from his or her environment. In a chapter from ! e Perception of the Environment in which he discusses skill and the construction of artefacts, anthropologist Tim Ingold insists on the importance of doing away with the modern dichotomy between art and technology that separates made things in terms of oppositions between mental/material or semiotics/mechanics, and presents the notion of "skill" as a solution to this split.37 To describe what he means by "skill", Ingold articulates # ve critical dimensions of skilled practice: the # rst is that intentionality and functionality are immanent in it as a synergetic process involving humans, tools and materials rather than being an attribute of one or the other; the second is that it is an ecologically embedded system of relations between the body and the environment; the third is that it is grounded in an attentive perceptual involvement with things requiring care and a haptic dexterity based on a "continual adjustment or "tuning" of movements in response to an ongoing monitoring of the emergent task"; the fourth is that it is handed down practically "by introducing novices into contexts which a$ ord selected opportunities for perception and action, and by providing the sca$ olding that enables them to make use of these a$ ordances"; the # % h, related to Ingold's claim that "what we call 'things' too are grown", is that skilled practice precedes design in generating the form of artefacts.38 I think that by describing "the transparent nature of the manufacturing process" that makes for an ideal plaything, Benjamin is referring to artefacts 37 Tim INGOLD, ! e Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Taylor & Francis Inc. 2000. 38 INGOLD, ! e Perception of the Environment, p. 345; p. 345; p. 83. See also Tim INGOLD, "Making Culture and Weaving the World." In: GRAVES-BROWN, P. M. (ed.) Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture. London – New York: Routledge 2000 (50–71) where he argues we should think of making "as a modality of weaving" [p. 54], meaning that in making "we work from within the world, not upon it" [p. 68]. Instruments as Playthings 208 where the ! ve dimensions of skill articulated by Ingold are visible, that is objects that clearly present the a" ordances involved in making them as an essential part of those o" ered in interacting with them – this is the "clarity" that makes something a thing for "real living play". As components of an ecological environment that unfolds, rather than of a physical/material world that just is, these properties of things, as Ingold puts it, "occur", meaning that they are "processual and relational", that they are "neither objectively determined nor subjectively imagined, but practically experienced".39 As such, they emerge through a reciprocal and changing engagement between being and environment, which is what leads Ingold to the conclusion that "[t]he properties of materials, in short, are not attributes, but histories".40 Destruction I will elaborate on the necessity of a historical dimension when considering instruments as playthings when I $ esh out the principles of the methodology that I am proposing below. Before that however, I would like to address another aspect of the investigative tendency in play that is less concerned with arrangement and composition, a way at getting to the inner workings of a thing in which testing its a" ordances is pushed to its extreme, where the object is taken to its limit – its destruction. As Connor writes, perhaps all play has at its horizon the death of the plaything. When we put something to work, we use it for a particular purpose. In play, we seek not so much to use them as to use them up. % e point of putting things into play may be to play them out, to see how far they go, how far we can go with the open totality of their a" ordances.41 In "A Philosophy of Toys", the poet and essayist Charles Baudelaire, examining the role of playthings "in the great drama of life", considers the tendency to take them apart.42 Like Barthes and Benjamin, he begins his essay by describing the genial a" ordance of things in play, citing the example 39 Tim INGOLD, "Materials against Materiality." In: Tim INGOLD, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Oxon – New York: Routledge 2011, p. 30 (19–32). 40 Ibid., p. 32. 41 CONNOR, "A Philosophy of Fidgets," p. 3. 42 Charles BAUDELAIRE, "A Philosophy of Toys." In: Charles BAUDELAIRE, ! e Painter of Modern Life and other Essays. Translated by Jonathan Mayne. London: Phaidon Press 1964, p. 198 (197–203). For further examples of the a" ordance of playthings see also Charles Lina Hakim 209 of a simple chair that becomes at once carriage, horses and passengers in a game of diligence.43 Baudelaire also underlines the creativity involved in such play, the "poetry of childhood" that unfolds when engaging with "these little inventions".44 " is even has him place playthings at the origin of aesthetic sensibility: "the toy", he writes, "is the child's # rst initiation to art".45 However, for Baudelaire, the "overriding desire" when putting things to play, the principal a$ ordance of playthings, is the opportunity to dismantle them, to dissect them, to break them open in order to "get at and see [their] soul".46 He illustrates this testing of a plaything to destruction, and the "extraordinary agility and strength" applied at it: " e child twists and turns his toy, scratches it, shakes it, bumps it against the walls, throws it on the ground. From time to time he makes it re-start its mechanical motions, sometimes in the opposite direction. Its marvellous life comes to a stop. " e child, like the people besieging the Tuileries, makes a supreme e$ ort; at last he opens it up, he is stronger. But where is the soul? " is is the beginning of melancholy and gloom.47 Baudelaire sees in this impulse to play things out "a # rst metaphysical tendency", a search concerned with the nature of existence for, as he put it at the text's opening, "is not the whole life to be found [in playthings]?"48 While the answer to this at # rst seemed a% rmative, it now appears to be "no". Or perhaps Baudelaire is suggesting that things are not that simple, that in a sense all of life it is in playthings yet at the same time not really there at all. Allegorical objects It is this paradox that literary theorist Daniel Ti$ any picks up on in Toy Medium in which he describes the ambivalent matter of playthings, how they are always more and less than what they take themselves to be.49 He points BAUDELAIRE, "" e Plaything of the Poor." In: SMITH, T. R. (ed.) Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry. New York: Boni & Liveright Inc. 1919 (70–71). 43 Ibid., pp. 198–199. 44 Ibid,. p. 200. 45 Ibid,. p. 199. 46 Ibid,. p. 202. 47 Ibid,. pp. 202–203. 48 Ibid,. p. 202. 49 Daniel TIFFANY, Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric. Berkley: University of California Press 2000. Instruments as Playthings 210 out how the plaything in Baudelaire's text is "antithetical, at once philosophical and inimical to re! ection, ideal and concrete".50 " e impulse to open up the plaything in the destructive narrative above is in fact evidence of the "metaphysical" world that it represents for the child, the idea of "material things founded on the immateriality of 'the soul' – the allegorical object, in e# ect".51 Rather than the "melancholy and gloom" that the spleen-ridden Baudelaire sees in the failure at $ nding a soul in the plaything, Ti# any argues that it registers the beginning of allegorical thinking: playthings are our $ rst models for our understanding of the world, they are exemplary of the objects we use as structural substitutes in natural philosophical investigations to make the intangible tangible. As Ti# any puts it, Inquiries into the nature of material substance rely fundamentally on images that do not bear witness to empirical entities, but rather serve as models of unobservable phenomena. Indeed, the realism of modern physics (in contrast to its mathematical foundation) relies, by necessity, on a framework of vivid analogies and tropes, sometimes realized in visual practice. " at is to say, the foundation of material substance is intelligible to us, and therefore appears to be real, only if we credit the imaginary pictures we have composed of it.52 Ti# any's book is concerned with how poetry "can help to elucidate the sometimes paradoxical bodies conjured by scienti$ c materialism"; and an exploration of playthings winds through his inquiry because the toy, he argues, is the fundamental manifestation of the paradoxical thing suspended between matter and immateriality, "a spectacular device that discloses, in the name of science, the immaterial foundation of the object – the invisibility of the real".53 In his narrative, playthings represent the "hypothetical modelling of invisible matter", which leads him to write that "[t]he toy divines the invisible substance of things".54 When breaking the plaything open to look for its interior mechanism and $ nding no "soul" in it, we learn that our natural investigations can only yield an imagined interior of things; which is why the plaything, as well as being an abbreviation of the whole world, is the perfect symbol of the methods with which we investigate the world. Perhaps this is the reasoning that 50 TIFFANY, Toy Medium, p. 307, note 21. 51 Ibid,. p. 73. 52 Ibid,. p. 3. 53 Ibid,. p. 6; p. 82. 54 Ibid,. p. 52. Lina Hakim 211 has Benjamin conclude his article by saying: "If a modern poet maintains that for each individual there exists an image which engulfs the world, how o" en does that image not arise from an old toy chest?"55 Even testing playthings to their destruction is in a sense constructive to understanding: when they break, playthings simply go from being things with which we understand the world to becoming things with we understand our ways of understanding the world with things – "thinking things" with which we interrogate our thinking about the world. But breaking playthings open is also practically useful in the quest to understanding them as artefacts, as made things: it reveals how they are constituted, not only in terms of material parts, but also, as Benjamin suggests, in terms of the technologies that form them and make them work, which it to say, as Ingold shows, the di# erent dimensions of skill involved in their making, the combined movements of people, materials and tools that bring them to be. When a thing stops to work or is broken open, these movements are made visible through the formation of an understanding of what causes the thing to fail or break. In this sense, breaking a plaything is only part of putting it to play with all the search and learning that such play involves. Playthings methodology $ e methodology I am proposing is concerned with the material culture of natural philosophy and science, speci% cally with the ways in which we learn from made things and from the act of making in investigating the world. Rather than the "knowledge" we get from instruments, with all the epistemological baggage of truth, justi% cation and objectivity that the term entails, it addresses something closer to the word "comprehension" which % nds its Latin etymological root (comprehend-!re) in the act of grasping at something before actually seizing or comprising it, and the word "understanding" with its source in the German for "to step under" (understân) or "to take upon oneself" (unterstehen), with the embodied engagement with the world 55 $ is quote is from Benjamin's "Toys and Play" referenced above, but I am using here Ti# any's translation in Toy Medium [p. 81] which, by using the word "engulf" to translate from the German "versinkt", I % nd closer to the original text: "Wenn aber ein moderner Dichter sagt, es gebe für jeden ein Bild, über dem die ganze Welt ihm versinkt, wie vielen steigt es nicht aus einer alten Spielzeugschachtel auf?" from Walter BENJAMIN, "Spielzeug und Spielen." In: TIEDEMANN-BARTELS, H. (ed.) Gesammelte Schri" en, vol. 3. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag 1972, p. 131. Instruments as Playthings 212 that such actions would involve.56 My suggestion is that regarding scienti! c instruments as playthings would allow for a multi-faceted approach to their role in the co-constitution of human perception and understanding of the world. Following the elaboration on playthings above, let us go through the ways in which the analogy is fruitful for these aims by applying them to the Crookes radiometer as a case study. ! e Crookes radiometer # e most common form for a Crookes radiometer (or light-mill) consists of a glass bulb of about 10 cm in diameter, mounted on a stand. It is partially evacuated and contains an anemometer-like structure of four vanes pivoted on a vertical axis. # ese vanes are usually white on one side and black on the other, and all face the same way. When the instrument is exposed to light, this "$ y" rotates with the white sides leading, its spin intensifying with the length of exposure, and slowing down then stopping when the light source is taken away.57 In an article published on the centennial of the instrument's inception, historian Cli% on W. Draper makes a case for the importance in science education of the device that has "fallen to the unprestigious role of a gi% shop knickknack".58 Besides the fact that its theory "is today still only qualitatively understood", his reasons include the interest of its inventor William Crookes' life and career, its history's wealth in "accidental observations, lengthy and ingenious experimentation, and incorrect conclusion all leading to a not totally satisfying theory" and the ease with which it lends itself to experiments adaptable to di& erent audiences rendering it a very useful classroom tool.59 Draper's arguments for giving attention to the Crookes radiometer show the breadth of play of the device and explain its particular suitability for the "playthinging" that I am putting forward in this article. 56 "[comprehend, v.]" in: Oxford English Dictionary [online]. Second edition, 1989. 2012. Available at: <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/37847> [cit. 7. 8. 2012]; "[understand, v.]" in: Oxford English Dictionary [online]. Second edition, 1989. 2012. Available at: <http://www.oed. com/view/Entry/212085> [cit. 7. 8. 2012]. 57 Crookes names the moving part this way ! rst in William CROOKES, "On Repulsion Resulting from Radiation – Parts III. & IV." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 166, 1876, p. 344 (325–376). See image 1. 58 Cli% on W. DRAPER, "# e Crookes Radiometer Revisited: A Centennial Celebration." Journal of Chemical Eductaion, vol. 53, 1976, no. 6, p. 356 (356–357). 59 Ibid., p. 356. Lina Hakim 213 Although I believe that the aspects that will be teased out through regarding a device as a plaything are true of all artefacts, some devices, for nonnoumenal reasons, seem to show them in an extended way: they seem to be made to be transformed and seem particularly prone to fall in the gaps of classi" cation systems, to require and register paradigm shi# s that they outlive. $ e radiometer falls into this category, and that probably explains why it became a toy and is still widely available today. Image 1: "Crookes Radiometer," Image by Timeline for Wikipedia Commons [online] 2005. Available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crookes_radiometer.jpg> [cit. 2. 9. 2012]. A good standard description of the device explains that, despite its name, it is a demonstration device rather than a measuring instrument, relates the way in which it grew out of its inventor's recognition of an anomaly when weighing hot samples in vacuum, tells how its theory caused controversy from the time it was " rst presented in 1874 and how its operation is still considered complicated to this day, recounts some of the big names of science whose interest it attracted, describes the way in which Crookes' investigation of its e% ects took him in a di% erent direction (generally described as erroneous) to his contemporaries and usually lists Instruments as Playthings 214 the device's contributions to the kinetic theory of gases and to the invention of the cathode ray tube.60 Such an account certainly points out the fascinating story of the device but, I would argue, does not capture the array of understanding that the device o" ers as a material object, the variation in its a" ordance to action and perception, which is to say its "play". # inking of it as plaything however, as I will demonstrate below, leads to a more comprehensive account in these respects. Restoring mobility A plaything, as we've seen in Hodgkin's account above, is recognised as such through the part it performs in the looping structure of play. It is a material object in constant oscillation along this loop, its nature varying in a recurrent semi-cycle. It seamlessly moves between the status of tool, toy and symbol, is both sensory and abstract and, rather than being de$ ned by its function, embraces change in its role, constitution and classi$ cation all the while still remaining itself. Considering a scienti$ c instrument as a plaything means, in the $ rst place, restoring its inherent mobility as an artefact. Rather than de$ ning the instrument in terms of its function, it means opening it up to the various uses it has been put to, as well to others it might in the future be applied for, whether scienti$ c or not because all thoughtful engagements produce understanding. In the case of the radiometer, this means that rather than de$ ning it as a demonstration instrument, which creates a phenomenon and provides working knowledge of it, we can also address its inventor's intended function of it as a measuring instrument for radiation (whence its appellation radiometer), regardless of it ful$ lling this function. It also allows us to look into the way it was hypothesised as a model: for action at a distance in Crookes's $ rst interpretation of its behaviour as well as (a not particularly e" ective one) for the kinetic theory of gases in the accepted explanation of its workings. It gives us access to the tacit know-how informed by its construction as perfected by Crookes and his assistant Charles Gimmingham, as well as to the objective information it o" ers that passes into the domain of scienti$ c 60 Excellent examples of such an account are two articles by Norman R. HECKENBERG, "Radiometer, Crookes." In: BUD, R. – WARNER, D. J. (eds.), Instruments of Science: An Historical Encyclopedia. London – New York: Science Museum & Smithsonian 1998, pp. 510–511; and Norman R. HECKENBERG, "Crookes' Radiometer and Otheoscope." Bulletin of the Scienti! c Instrument Society, no. 50, 1996, pp. 40–42. Lina Hakim 215 and technological knowledge proper. It also admits the subjective understanding it has o! ered at various times, including its relevance to Crookes' spiritualist investigations into medium communication. In other words, considering the radiometer a plaything challenges the divisions, de# nitions and categorisations that would limit what is admitted as understanding in what the device has to o! er. Sensitive and enquiring process In 1873, Crookes was attempting to determine the atomic weight of $ allium, the new element that he had discovered by use of the spectroscope. It was during these "very laborious researches" that he noted the odd behaviour of the warm samples that he was weighing in an evacuated chamber, and it was this recognition of an anomaly and the desire to stabilise its e! ect that lead to the making of the radiometer. Noticing that something is behaving anomalously presupposes a tacit knowledge of the context in which a phenomenon is encountered, that is an attentive sensitivity to the usual workings of a de# ned environment. It results from directed chance, borne out of a more or less de# ned course of investigation and necessitating skill and training in order to recognise the signi# cance of the chance encounter; in this case, the anomalous behaviour of heated bodies in vacuum. In Representing and Intervening, philosopher of science Ian Hacking suggests that even the most irrational looking course of inquiry can be a tool of discovery. To the question: "must there be a conjecture under test in order for an experiment to make sense?" he answers: "I think not."61 What is however required are attentiveness, care and practice, which provide the means of understanding and interpreting the e! ects produced. It is important that Crookes was aware of how things were meant to behave according to the scienti# c theories of the time and through his experimental experience. Had this not been the case, he would not have distinguished the phenomenon as anomalous. It is also essential that he recognised its meaningful potential. Without this informed curiosity, experimentation would not have taken place. $ e recognition of an anomaly in his study of $ allium led Crookes to look at ways of elaborating the striking e! ect that he believed would be of scienti# c signi# cance. 61 Ian HACKING, Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge – New York – Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 154. Instruments as Playthings 216 ! is inductive process and its various contingencies are brought to the fore when one considers the device as a plaything: the sensitive and enquiring approach to the world that it entails is put forward, suggesting a hands-on and groping approach to understanding, the more embodied and immersed aspect of scienti# c inductive reasoning. To the enduring philosophical question of whether it is theory or practice that comes # rst in scienti# c inquiry, the answer this method presents is an oscillation between the two, a reciprocal constitution of one through the other. It also brings out the spatial nature of this kind of engagement when all paths are still possible and various options are tested; and helps identify the particular context for this searching activity, an experimental space which, like the privileged zone of play, has its own laws and is in a way extracted from everyday rules. Instruments in the making are like playthings as the things we think of in the absorption and open-ended intent that "playing" with them requires. Evocative objects: things we think with Instruments are evocative objects for their makers and users. In the case of the radiometer, this is made particularly clear through its inventor adopting the instrument as a symbol for his scienti# c researches and achievements. When the scientist was knighted in 1897, the most prominent icon in the design of his coat of arms (pictured below, image 2) is a depiction of the radiometer. His chosen motto inscribed on a scroll underneath it is "Ubi crux ibi lux," which translates into: "Where the cross is, there is light." Although this line most obviously refers to the Maltese cross on his cathode ray which features twice at the upper corners of the design, his biographer William H. Brock also reads it as wordplay by the inventor: "Where Crookes is, there is light" – the light of knowledge provided by the radiometer, its whirling vanes representing "the black of scienti# c ignorance $ eeing from the white of a new understanding of fundamental physics."62 A 1902 portrait of Crookes holding the radiometer # rmly in his le% hand while his right hand rests casually in his pocket further demonstrates the symbolic importance of the radiometer for its inventor (see image 3). ! e fact that he chose to be represented with the device in his hand two decades a% er he # rst presented it is signi# cant. ! e image reveals something 62 William H. BROCK, William Crookes (1832–1919) and the Commercialisation of Science. London: Ashgate 2008, p. 222. Lina Hakim 217 of the relationship between the instrument and its maker: Crookes seems con! dent in his handling of the object held up like a sword. It is the weapon that renders the world knowable and controllable by science, and it becomes an extension of the scientist's body, assimilated by his everyday practice. Scientist and instrument appear bound in a seamless way by a narrative of knowledge and intellectual ascendance. In this narrative, the radiometer plays the part of the key to understanding the world. Image 2 (le# ): "Sir William Crookes (1832–1919)" in Escutcheons of Science – Armorial of Scientists – Numericana [online]. Available at: <http://www.numericana.com/ arms/crookes.htm> [cit. 28. 6. 2009]. Image 3 (right): "Sir William Crookes (1832–1919)" from Vanity Fair, 1902, by "Spy" Sir Leslie WARD (1851–1922) [online]. Available at: <http://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Sir_William_Crookes_1902.jpg> [cit. 16. 5. 2009]. A tiny otheoscope mounted on a tiepin that Crookes is said to have always worn plays a similar symbolic role. I found a reference to it in a letter to his son where he introduces this new variant of the radiometer under the ! rst name he had given it, "elaunoscope", writing: "I have one about Instruments as Playthings 218 1⁄2 inch in diameter mounted as a scarf pin."63 I believe it is this accessory that I photographed in a small case at Blythe House (below, images 4 and 5). It can now be found in a case near the entrance of Royal Society's Library in Carlton Terrace, London, along with most of Crookes' radiometers, which he presented to the Royal Society in 1911. Images 4 and 5: Photographs taken by the author at the Science Museum's storage facility in Blythe House in April 2009. Recognition of and reaction to a! ordances As with playthings, what makes an instrument evocative is a result of the recognition of and reaction to the possibilities of action that it presents to its maker as well as to its users. # ey result from the a$ ordances of an object and/or environment to a scientist that appear useful to his or her investigative purposes. # e "actions of a demiurge" that lead to their making 63 William CROOKES, "Letter to Henry," quoted in E. E. FOURNIER D'ALBE, ! e Life of Sir William Crookes. London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. 1923, p. 261. Lina Hakim 219 consist of testing out, modelling with, and re! ning materials and phenomena in particular circumstances for which they present themselves as useful. What an instrument o" ers to be done with it, as with a plaything, cannot be thought of as separate from the process of making it, from the skilled practice involving materials and techniques that leads to its emergence. In "Showing, Doing and the Ontology of Using Scienti! c Instruments", philosopher of science Denis L. Sepper proposes the following description for how an artefact becomes a scienti! c instrument:64 I would suggest that as a general principle that objects become scienti! c instruments (or perhaps proto-instruments) when they display an e" ect of interest to researchers, i.e., within an already well-de! ned context of investigation. [...] If the e" ect is su$ ciently striking and if one also discovers that one can elaborate the e" ect and even do things with it, the object becomes a full-% edged processing instrument.65 Sepper further notes that the transformation of an object into a processing instrument a" ects the instrumental signi! cance of related objects and opens up the possibility of developing new compound and more complex instruments.66 Scienti! c instruments, then, come to be or, more accurately, are made, within particular contexts of investigation through their association with particular e" ects that are enrolled for action and interpretation in these contexts and that can subsequently extend beyond them. & inking of instruments as playthings brings these contexts, e" ects and negotiations to the fore. In that sense, it helps unravel what is referred to as "black-boxing" in the sociology of science: rather than considering instruments as inputoutput devices that unproblematically transmit natural knowledge, it facilitates the aims of constructive approaches to the history of science which address scienti! c practices and socio-political and cultural contexts in order to unravel the social means through which particular experiments executed 64 Dennis L. SEPPER, "Showing, Doing and the Ontology of Using Scienti! c Instruments." In: DRAGONI, G. – McCONNELL, A. – TURNER, G. L'E. (eds.), Proceedings of the Eleventh International Scienti! c Instrument Symposium [Bologna University, 9–14 September, 1991]. Bologna: Gra! s Edizioni, 1994 (29–34). 65 Ibid., p. 30. 66 Ibid., pp. 31–32. Instruments as Playthings 220 by speci! c experimenters with speci! c instruments came to produce valid knowledge for particular audiences.67 Reverse black-boxing In the case of the radiometer, this allows an elaboration on Crookes and Gimmingham's experimental work towards stabilising the observed e" ects of repulsion resulting from radiation into an instrument "which had none of [the] defects [of previous arrangements], whilst it showed the movement of rotation in a very convenient matter".68 It also allows for a discussion of the scienti! c context in which the device was presented, the controversy it caused in the interpretation of its e" ects, the various players involved in its scienti! c career and its eventual epistemic obsolescence. While the radiometer ! rst caused sensation in the scienti! c community when it was presented at a Soirée of the Royal Society on April 7th 1875, especially because of its promise of answers about the nature of light and radiation, critics of Crookes theory of its behaviour were quick to emerge. His positing of a pressure of radiation causing the vanes to rotate was criticised by Osborne Reynolds who convincingly argued that the movement of the radiometers' vanes could be easily explained by the presence of residual gas in the evacuated chamber.69 Reynolds further referred to an experiment by Arthur Schuster, led at his instigation, which gave experimental evidence that "the Force which turns the Mill is not directly referable to Radiation". $ is consisted in suspending a radiometer with two parallel ! bres and subjecting it to a light source. If external radiant light caused the repulsion then, because of the tiny amount of friction in the glass vessel, the whole instrument would turn in the same direction as the vanes. However if the forces were produced within the instrument, then the instrument would rotate in the opposite direction of the vanes in accordance with Newton's third law of motion. $ e latter was observed and Schuster concluded that: "$ e motion in the light-mill is wholly due to the forces acting between the revolving mill and 67 See Jan GOLINSKI, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, p. 140, de! nition of "black-boxing". 68 William CROOKES, "On Repulsion Resulting from Radiation. Parts III. & IV." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 166, 1876, p. 339 (325–376). 69 Osborne REYNOLDS, "On the Forces Caused by the Communication of Heat between a Surface and a Gas; And on a New Photometer." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 166, 1876, p. 726 (725–735). Lina Hakim 221 its enclosure."70 Based on the experiment, Reynolds proceeded with calculations that led to the explanation commonly held to this day.71 His notion of "! ermal Transpiration" and Maxwell's development on that theory eventually explained the radiometer e" ect as a result of the di" erence in temperature between the two sides of the vane causing gas molecules at the edge to slide in such a way as to cause tangential stress on the vanes' surface and thereby produce motion.72 Consequent theoretical researches on the behaviour of particles and on the properties of rare$ ed gas by all involved led to the progressive development of a new molecular kinetic theory of gas, and pushed the radiometer away from the centre of attention as it became reduced to merely a context amongst others in which to test the new theory. By 1880, apart from a few sparse speculations, scientists seemed no longer concerned with the radiometer itself, their attention now directed to the phenomena in rare$ ed gases that it had contributed to enlighten. 73 ! ingness: materials and technologies While such an unpacking of black-boxes is now common practice in approaches to the history of science and technology, the plaything methodology adds a dimension that seems to be le% out by such historiographies: they seem to overlook what the thing itself does outside of socio-political and scienti$ c discourses, to leave out what the instrument's "thingness", the materials and technologies at work in it, a" ord to perception, action and understanding. 70 ! is was later regarded as the "crucial experiment" on the radiometer. Arthur SCHUSTER, "On the Nature of the Force Producing the Motion of a Body Exposed to Rays of Heat and Light." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 166, 1876, p. 718 (715–724). 71 REYNOLDS, "On the Forces," p. 730. 72 Osborne REYNOLDS, "On Certain Dimensional Properties of Matter in the Gaseous State," Part I-II Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 170, 1879, pp. 727–845; J. C. MAXWELL, "On Stresses in Rari$ ed Gases Arising from Inequalities of Temperature." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 170, 1879, pp. 231–256. 73 It is worth noting that in 1924, Albert Einstein contributed additional explanation to the radiometer's behaviour that was picked up by M. Knudsen who elaborated on it in 1930. ! e "Einstein e" ect" suggested an additional phenomenon at work in the radiometer: that of the excess pressure at the edges of the vane. ! is would be caused by gas molecules at the edge being held back both by molecules rebounding on the vane one side and, less e" ectively, by molecules passing the edge to the cooler side. Instruments as Playthings 222 ! is attention to technology and materials in play may be the essential aspect that leads a consideration of scienti# c instruments into the realm of playthings. Scienti# c instruments are things made with skilful use of techniques and materials (ahead of and informing form), and engagement with them foregrounds the a$ ordances of these in the exploration of the world. Moreover, these a$ ordances, by characterising the looping movement of playthings, are shown to vary over time: what particular materials and technologies o$ er to perception, action and understanding evolves with respect to context, circumstance and perceiver/actor/interpreter. I use the expression "historical a$ ordance" to refer to this notion which is the main argument for looking at the instruments of science and technology as playthings. Historical a! ordance Gibson's theory of a$ ordance gives leeway for a variation in or evolution of the a$ ordance of an environment or a thing, because the ecological environment, as he presents it, is a blend of permanence and change, what he calls "discontinuous change" rather than "transformation" in order to set variance and invariance as reciprocals in describing the stable and changing relationships between self and world. A$ ordances, he tells us, are speci# ed in the relative invariants over transformations, and involve a reciprocal process of attunement (as in active and progressive adjustment and equilibration towards harmony) between being and environment ("resonating" to one another), a dynamic reciprocity. Since relative ecological constants and a$ ordances that appear to have the quality of stability and permanence persist to the degree to which these constants persist, the invariance of an a$ ordance is just a matter of di$ ering time scales: what seems stable is just in a di$ erent regime of duration, it endures. A$ ordances, then, are always (semi-cyclically) historical. ! is "historical a$ ordance" of things that changes over time is the principal notion that this methodology aims to tease out. By regarding scienti# c artefacts as playthings, the range of "play" in their a$ ordance is brought to the fore, and these variations in and evolution of their a$ ordances call for an historical approach to register them. A historical account can take into consideration the mobility and transformability of things while keeping the memory of their past a$ ordances and anticipating future ones, it can show that change is occurring yet in a continuous subsisting thing. Just as borrowed or adapted terms conserve their prior layers of meaning, so artefacts retain a memory of their past a$ ordances; and just as Lina Hakim 223 terms o! er potential poetic uses inspired by earlier ones, so objects suggest further ways of deploying them that extend previous uses and practices. " ere is always time in things: they are chronic (rather than temporal) because they recurrently change and sometimes disobey what we think is characteristic of them. In order to take this into account, the methodology set out here approaches objects in a historical way, which is not to say that it does so chronologically: history is not considered as a linear progression and no such thing as precedence or a "more real" reality is posited. Like the looping structure of play, it is viewed as a semi-cyclical spatial movement rather than as a matter of succession: sometimes what happens latest in an object's career is what seems more "primary" at the time and place of writing. No such thing as a "more primary" quality or characteristic or role of a thing is therefore posited or assumed, except in relation to a particular perspective/ context/etc. Although I will resort to using it in the text, this explains why "declination" is not quite the adequate term to describe what might appear to be the "other" lives of things: it implies that there is a "real" life and an order of precedence, whereas the plaything methodology considers that all manifestations of an object are valid. By adopting this historiography, the varying a! ordances of artefacts are brought forward, and any suggestion of pattern or objectivity is understood as the result of a regular recurrence or of repeatedly instantiated sets of relations. " e un$ xity, uncontainability and irreducibility of the artefacts considered thus foregrounded render them ideal for a "philosophical" and "elastic" understanding of things that is also involved in a thought about its own processes. Instead of stable information and de$ nition, scienti$ c instruments regarded as playthings o! er a lot of scope for "tuning in" to them as thinking things, with sometimes the reward of rare moments of "being in tune" with them: they become, in other words, ideal philosophical toys. ! e radiometer's historical a" ordances " e notion of historical a! ordance as I've described it above brings attention to the di! erent materials and technologies that compose the device as histories, $ rst of each constitutive part separately and then of their particular arrangement and relationships within it. In the case of the radiometer, this involves looking at the cultural history of glass, its a! ordance as a material and process, and the problems that its transparency and transitivity generate. Literary scholar Isobel Armstrong reminds us that 19th century glass was blown by artisans, which means that Instruments as Playthings 224 in using it "you literally looked through, and by means of, somebody else's breath."74 She explains how as a consequence of its availability and ubiquity in the mid 1800s it came to participate in the formation of consciousness itself and suggests that the epistemological questions raised by glass at the time were about mediation, transitivity and their implications. " e dialectic of glass, at once letting through and blocking, or selectively doing one or the other, generated, she writes, "di# erent kinds of epistemological confusion out of the very lucidity of glass."75 Transparency and mediation are at the heart of this confusion: "Just as the artisan's breath was invisible, so also was the fact of mediation, as the invisible shaped experience."76 Attention to glass as substance and process allows us to problematise the radiometer's glass enclosure in laboratory practice in terms of surfaces, membranes and boundaries. It also brings attention to technologies of containment, and leads us to the next material constitutive of the device: the vacuum (though later understood as partial) that it is a necessary vessel for. " e radiometer was for the scientist James Clerk Maxwell $ rst and foremost a device that allowed, by means of a glass globe both impermeable and see-through, for the sealing and observation of vacuum, or at least of a condition or medium "much nearer to nothing" than had previously been achieved. 77 Interrogating vacuum, which only became an experimental object that could be made and manipulated in the late seventeenth century, opens up discussions about the hypothesised subtle medium called "ether" and its use as a trope for natural philosophical investigations. It crucially allows us to look into its a# ordance to Crookes' spiritualist investigations: this attenuated environment held for him the possibility of revealing the e# ects of parapsychological transmissions, its conductive capability mirroring that of the sensitive mediums of nineteenth century séances – the radiometer, for Crookes, could render spiritual energy phenomenal. 74 Isobel ARMSTRONG, "Technology and Text: Glass Consciousness and Nineteenth-Century Culture." In: FLINT, K. – MORPHY, H. (eds.), Culture, Landscape and Environment: ! e Linacre Lectures 1997. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, p. 149 (149–175). See also Isobel ARMSTRONG, Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008. 75 Ibid., p. 149. 76 Ibid. 77 Letter from Maxwell to Robert Cay, 15 May 1876, quoted in S. G. BRUSH and C. W. F. EVERITT, "Maxwell, Osborne Reynolds, and the Radiometer." In: MC CORMMACH, R. (ed.), Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, Volume 1. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1969, p. 112. Lina Hakim 225 It can then be studied as a device for explicating an environment where di" erent laws of nature operate, its magical potential heightened by the suggestion of perpetual movement in the rotation of its vanes. Artistic declinations Furthermore, the plaything methodology allows us to look at artistic practices that put the instrument to use, bringing alternative a" ordances to view and suggesting future ones. Various artworks can be considered as material "declinations" of an instrument in a chain of connection that links objects to one another.78 An attention to artworks is particularly fruitful in uncovering an object's a" ordances outside of its designated function because of the way in which artists put things maximally to play in their investigations, processes and productions. # ree brief examples demonstrate how this is the case with the radiometer. # e artist Francis Picabia's 1913 watercolour Mechanical Expression Seen ! rough Our Own Mechanical Expression shows an abstracted radiometer that he uses to represents the dancer Stacia Napierkowska.79 # e analogy puts forward the empathetic a" ordance of the radiometer's performance, inversing the usual trope in his title so that it is human movement that promises to reveal the inner working of the device. In Northern Lights, the novelist Philip Pullman alludes to the radiometer when describing the magical e" ect of a scienti$ c instrument: # en it became clear: a little thing like a weathervane, with four sails black on one side and white on the other, began to whirl around as the light struck it. It illustrated a moral lesson, the Intercessor explained, for the black of ignorance % ed from the light, whereas the wisdom of white rushed to embrace it.80 Pullman's account puts forward the device's resonance as a holy object and sheds light both on Crookes' adoption of it as a symbol of his epistemic virtue and on the reasons for which it seems to promise a link between the physical and the metaphysical. 78 # e word "declination" is taken from Christopher PINNEY, "# ings Happen: Or, From Which Moment Does # at Object Come?" In: MILLER, D. (ed.), Materiality. Durham – London: Duke University Press 2005 (256–272). In this article he suggests that networks of objects might o" er an alternative method of engaging with things. 79 Francis PICABIA, Mechanical Expression Seen through Our Own Mechanical Expression, watercolour and pencil on paper, 1913. New York, Collection Lydia Malbin. 80 Philip PULLMAN, Northern Lights. London: Scholastic 1995, p. 149. Instruments as Playthings 226 More recently, artist Luke Jerram's chandeliers, made of hundreds of radiometers (665 for a 5m tall chandelier), multiply the device's aesthetic e" ect in a spectacular demonstration of its # ickering play with light, bring forward the sensitivity of its responsiveness to environmental light and heat and seem to point to an in$ nity of atmospheric enclosures each contained in an ever larger one.81 While I cannot expand on these examples within the scope of this article, these brief sketches demonstrate how productive the study of artistic declinations of instruments can be. Once regarded as playthings, they are found to share the aesthetic inspiration of artworks that put them to play. I have elaborated in this article a phenomenological/ecological understanding of the plaything in order to argue that considering scienti$ c instruments as playthings is a generative methodology that restores their mobility and inherent transformability, takes into account the skill required in making them as well as their historical a" ordances and allows for their consideration alongside objects from di" erent $ elds with which they resonate. I hope that in doing so I have made a convincing case for reviving the category of philosophical toy in studies of science and technology. 81 Luke JERRAM, Chandeliers (undated). See project page on the artist's website available at: <http://www.lukejerram.com/projects/chandeliers> [cit. 13. 4. 2013]. Lina Hakim