作为变革动因的印刷机

在信息触手可及的今天，我们容易把'传播方式的革命'当成理所当然。伊丽莎白·爱森斯坦却提出一个近乎冒犯的判断：印刷机之所以能推动文艺复兴、宗教改革与科学革命，关键不在它'传播'了什么，而在它如何改变了知识被生产、整理、固化与协作的方式。她花了十四年，把被人为割裂的印刷史、经济史、科学史重新缝合，论证印刷术带来的标准化、可校勘、可累积，怎样让学者得以站在前人精确的文本之上而非重复抄写的谬误之中。这本书最见功力的地方，是它拒绝'技术决定论'的简单叙事——印刷机是'动因'而非'替罪羊'，它重新布置了变革的舞台，却不独自演出戏剧。适合愿意啃注释、追问'媒介如何塑造思维'的读者；若只期待'印刷术对社会的影响'这类即时结论，或许会觉得吃力。

Elizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein is an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th century France. She is well-known for her work on the history of early printing, writing on the transition in media between the era of 'manuscript culture' and that of 'print culture', as well as the role of the printing press in effecting broad cultural change in Western civilization. Eisenstein's best-known work is The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, a two-volume, 750-page exploration of the effects of movable type printing on the literate elite of post-Gutenberg Western Europe. In this work she focuses on the printing press's functions of dissemination, standardization, and preservation and the way these functions aided the progress of the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution. Eisenstein's work brought historical method, rigor, and clarity to earlier ideas of Marshall McLuhan and others, about the general social effects of such media transitions. This work provoked debate in the academic community from the moment it was published and is still inspiring conversation and new research today. Her work also influenced later thinking about the subsequent development of digital media. Her work on the transition from manuscript to print influenced thought about new transitions of print text to digital formats, including multimedia and new ideas about the definition of text.