Science is something that people “do” and not necessarily “think.” This is the premise that drives Harun Küçük's monograph Science without Leisure. He explores the practical domains of scientific activity in Istanbul during the closing decades of the 17th century and the start of the 18th century. The materialist aspects of science are at the forefront, rather than the scholastic and philosophical endeavor. Küçük's book joins the flourishing attention among historians to science as a craft, business, and material culture. This is a wonderful addition to a scholarship that thus far has been oriented toward the West. From an early modern Ottomanist perspective, Küçük adds the layer of popular science to the growing discussions on everyday social and utilitarian realities and collective cultural mindset.
The chronological framing of the book is from 1660 to 1732. Küçük explains his choice in relation to both political and scientific processes. The year 1660 saw the Great Fire in Istanbul that destroyed two-thirds of the Ottoman capital and opened the way for its spatial and social reconstruction. At that time, several calendars and medical recipes were translated from Latin into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. In 1732, the Patrona Halil rebellion ended, and with it the so-called Tulip Era. It also was a moment of yet another cluster of translations from Latin into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic, this time including university textbooks. The period between 1660 and 1732 was marked by intense Ottoman interest in science from Europe, for utilitarian welfare rather than solely for the sake of knowledge. This intellectual characteristic coalesced during a period of sociological transformations, political instability, and financial decline in Istanbul. At that time, puritans, artisans, and merchants, three groups who often overlapped, rose to prominence.
The overarching argument of Küçük's book is that Istanbul was occupied with the practical aspects of nature during these generations. The type of scientific activity, that was popular in Istanbul at that time, favored productive and tangible qualities without aiming at intellectual and abstract thinking and writing. In tandem, Ottomans now regarded experience as “proof” and favored logic of practice instead of formal logic.
Underlying all these changes was “leisure,” and lack of it, hence the title of the book: Science without Leisure. The study of theoretical science, including the risk of mistakes and lack of practicality, requires free time, cognitive freedom and distance, and some measure of financial support. As Küçük reminds us, these were not necessarily abundant in Istanbul during the early modern period. But it is precisely this situation that raises an interesting question: What does science look like in a very large and very cosmopolitan Istanbul, where many of those who studied nature were not highly trained scientists, did not enjoy much free time, were not above daily concerns, and were looking for lucrative rewards to offset very low wages?
To answer this question, Küçük presents a three-tiered discussion. The first tier consists of chapters 1 to 3. This section is devoted to economic and bibliographic background. The reader receives a bird's-eye view of Istanbul and the characteristics of the natural knowledge read in the city (“Istanbul and Her Sciences”); Istanbul's higher education in the form of the medreses, their material conditions, and their curricula, with an emphasis on natural philosophy, astronomy, medicine (“Istanbul's Medreses in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries”); and Istanbul's scholars and elite practical naturalists (“The Ottoman Scholastic Field and the Sciences”).
Chapters 4 and 5 comprise the second tier in Küçük's narrative. After a general discussion, Küçük presents specific case studies to demonstrate how practical science and practical scientists evolved in Ottoman reality. In “The Calendar” (Chapter 4), he situates the Ottoman astronomers in bureaucratic concerns, for instance tax calendar reform, rather than the general and theoretical planetary hypotheses originating in Europe. Chapter 5, “The Recipe” concentrates on the new drug-based movement and its immense popularity in Istanbul from the 1660s onward. This is where money was to be made in the medical market, Küçük says.
The third and final tier in the analysis appears in chapters 6 to 8. In this section, the focus is on Ottoman elites close to the palace and their skepticism of pure practical naturalism. In “Distinction: A Social Critique of Scientific Taste” (Chapter 6), the author argues that early 18th-century critics like the librarian Esad of Ioannina and the poet Yusuf Nabi wanted to distance themselves from the material and mercantile components of practical naturalism. They succeeded in adding more philosophical and moral tones to the work done by practical naturalists. Chapter 7, “Like Ants on a Watermelon: Practical Naturalists Encounter Philosophy,” discusses Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çַelebi and İbrahim Müteferrika. The chapter narrates how two well-known 18th-century Ottoman educated bureaucrats advocated management of practical naturalism because this knowledge could help Ottoman imperial governance. The eighth and last chapter, “Maritime, Mercantile, Sacred: Empiricism and the Compass,” suggests that one of the outcomes of the elite push against practical naturalism was the emergence of an empiricist discourse. All in all, only very few people felt the need for a philosophy of nature and complained about its absence.
The Conclusion brings the reader back to the bird's-eye perspective of how science looked in a very large and very cosmopolitan Istanbul between 1660 and 1732. The author connects the histories of Istanbul and science to revisit the main historiographical discussions of the history of early modern science.
Küçük's narrative reveals a fascinating reality of Istanbul and early modern science. According to Küçük, Istanbul required a very intensive struggle to make a living. It was an enthralling place, but not at all easy. He places scientific activity in the city into global contexts, distancing it from both the so-called scientific revolution in Europe and the so-called medieval Islamic Golden Age. The author rejects the usual evaluation of the quality and extent of modernization of Ottoman and Islamic science according to the degree of exposure to European science and the degree of interest in its adoption, arguing that this yardstick does not capture Ottoman realities. Küçük instead claims that early modern science in Istanbul and elsewhere was in fact hypermodern, oriented toward functions and objects.
