The Book I

This chapter argues that medieval and early modern ontological descriptions made use of a new material technology of inscription with the same tensional regime: the book. Without assuming any direct causation, the following two chapters show a clear similarity of kinetic structure in both theological description and its technology of inscription during this time. The new kind of kinography that rose to dominance in the West around the fourth and fifth centuries was called “bibliography”. The rise of bibliography, or book writing, functioned according to two major kinographic operations: the binding of the book, and the comprehension (or kinetic tension between author and the reader) of the book. Between the fifth and eighteenth centuries, two major book technologies were used in theological descriptions: the manuscript codex, from the fifth to fifteenth centuries, and the printed codex, from the fifteenth up to the eighteenth century.