The relation of practical experience and conceptual structures

The Archimedes Project, an online library under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute, has made available a searchable database of machine drawings from their digitizing efforts:

The database DMD is part of the research project The Relation of Practical Experience and Conceptual Structures in the Emergence of Science: Mental Models in the History of Mechanics, a project pursued by Department I of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Berlin, headed by Jürgen Renn. In its context, a large number of original sources concerning the history of mechanics have been made available on the Internet as a digital research library, the Archimedes Project. In this broader context the database DMD is especially devoted to studying the practical knowledge of early modern engineers. The aim of the database DMD is the provision of new ways of investigating early modern machine drawings. These documents are important not only for historians of technology but also for historians of science and art and more generally for scholars of Renaissance studies.