Mitchell, J. Allan. Instrumentality: On Technical Objects and Orientations in the Later Middle Ages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2024. 147 pp. ISBN (paperback): 978-1-5179-1739-5.

The history of science is much shaped by the history of its instruments - those tools designed to capture and store information. During the late Middle Ages, scientists sought, developed, and applied a remarkably diverse range of such objects and devices. Consequently, the period witnessed major technological innovations, including the adoption of gunpowder; the invention of vertical windmills, spectacles, mechanical clocks, and water mills; advancements in building techniques that supported the development of Gothic architecture; and the evolution of agricultural practices such as three-field crop rotation. J. Allan Mitchell’s Instrumentality: On Technical Objects and Orientations in the Later Middle Ages explores the cultural and intellectual history of this phenomenon by explaining how instrumental attitudes toward physical and conceptual tools, including diagrams, maps, concepts, methods, and disciplines shaped the history of the European Middle Ages, enabling people to reflect on and to evaluate both knowledge and the nature of cognition.

The book is divided into a general introduction, three analytical chapters, and a brief conclusion, which encompass both concrete and conceptual examples of technical objects, operations, and orientations that go beyond the Middle Ages. In the introduction of his book, J. Allan Mitchell examines medieval instruments ranging from time-keeping tools and mathematical diagrams to the literary devices of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower - all forms of instrumentality still recognizable and used today. He defines the concept of instrumentality in his introduction, considering premodern instruments such as spheres, equatoria, and astrolabes not only as useful tools but also, and more importantly, as “telling objects.” Mitchell states that the earliest recorded use of the term instrumentality appears in Geoffrey Chaucer’s A Treatise on the Astrolabe where he describes an altimetric device and its functions. For Chaucer as well Francis Bacon, Seneca, Boethius, Grosseteste, Isidore of Seville and other medieval thinkers, instrumentality is a multi-functional concept, encompassing critical thinking, historiography, criticism, and rhetoric and it therefore has a wide range of applications - from recreational and devotional to educational. Instrumentality, according to Mitchell, reveals how technical and scientific knowledge was stored, created, defined, distributed, and organized. Mitchell goes on to explain that the practices and principles that shaped medieval thought were truly interdisciplinary, and he emphasizes the diversity of those objects and materials that both express and extend knowledge - an ensemble of practical texts, techniques, and related technologies that make serious inquiry possible.

Chapter 1, titled “Intelligent Objects,” discusses Geoffrey Chaucer’s late-fourteenth century A Treatise on the Astrolabe, an unfinished work which describes a multipurpose device: an all-in-one clock, compass, calculator, star map, and data-storage-and-retrieval tool whose main function relies on the predictable arrangement of empirical phenomena. Of the treatise’s five projected parts, only two were completed: the first explains the physical components of a planispheric astrolabe, while the second outlines over forty possible applications, referred to as “conclusions.” The Treatise functions as a practical medieval instrument and a training manual, which highlights the intersections between literary and technical disciplines according to Mitchell. Mitchell’s analysis, which compares Chaucer’s poetic practice of textual transmission to an astrolabe, reveals the direct connection between the liberal and scientific arts and underscores the dual nature of this device: empirical and pragmatic, yet also translingual and transcultural. Chaucer’s distinctive manual effectively “translates” scientific knowledge, drawing on language, mathematics, geometry, astrophysics, and astronomy to convey how information is obtained, organized, converted, and applied.

In Chapter 2, titled “Graphic Interfaces,” Mitchell examines how two-dimensional diagrams mediate between the verbal and the visual. Using once again Chaucer’s Astrolabe as a central example, Mitchell shows how these models render external phenomena intelligible by measuring the movements of terrestrial and celestial bodies. Although the astrolabe is a three-dimensional device, it is also an embodied object of knowledge - a multimodal technology whose technical properties are inscribed on its surface and instantiated in its form. Mitchell questions how medieval surface inscriptions such as points, lines, and curves, and, more broadly, the skills of graphic page design contributed to the development of modern scientific and humanistic knowledge. His discussion aligns book and scientific knowledge, bridging cognition, perception, and physical application. The chapter also analyzes a wide range of concept-centered diagrams, maps, charts, tables, calendars, and similar tools from Ptolemy’s Geography and Almagest, Hugh St. Victor’s Practical Geometry to Matthew Paris’s Chronica Maiora, suggesting that these devices are not merely abstract representations but valuable instruments for understanding and interpreting various scientific phenomena.

In the final Chapter, “Learning Devices or Instruments of Language and Literature,” Mitchell focuses on the historical perspectives that shape and structure arguments about knowledge. He examines John Gower’s fourteenth-century Vox Clamantis, using Gower’s bow and arrow imagery as an example of how the arts fit within the broader framework of medieval instrumentality. Gower’s work, including his Confessio amantis, reveals in detail how technical objects influenced the development of language, especially grammar, along with logic, rhetoric, poetics, and literary practice. Both language and logic were central cognitive instruments essential to public life. Grammar, rhetoric, and poetics are instrumental in the sense of their capability for various types of work. Mitchell employs a cross-disciplinary approach, analyzing connections between the liberal and mechanical arts through references to medieval thinkers such as Hugh of St. Victor, Thierry of Chartes, John of Salisbury, Gundissalinus, Poliziano, and many others.

In the conclusion, titled “Toward a Critical Instrumentality,” Mitchell claims that instrumentality remains a contested concept, especially within today’s fast-paced technological culture where technicity becomes more of a functioning of a machine rather than a key element of a social fabric. He states that it is essential to maintain the cross-disciplinary connection between media and technology for the sake of a viable future. Knowledge functions instrumentally across all areas of life, especially within academia. Imaginative and practical, these instruments nonetheless carry an inherent ambivalence. Academia should strive to be both intellectually expansive and socially responsible. Mitchell concludes that bridging the gap between technology, science, and the arts is indispensable, since instruments of arts, logic, language, and analysis play a vital role in social and cultural change, advancement, transformation, and renewal. Overall, the book serves as an invaluable resource for scholars and general readers alike, offering a nuanced analysis of instrumentality and its complex and critical engagements with both the liberal and mechanical arts.

Irina I. Strout, Northeastern State University