Ellen Muehlberger’s latest monograph, Things Unseen, reminds readers that knowledge is a product, the output of an intricate machine. The “Knowledge Machine” (to borrow the title of Michael Strevens 2020 book) is sophisticated, with as many cogs, regulators, pinions, gears, gimbals, switches, widgets, and valves as variation in the knowledge-products it creates.
by Jennifer Barry
Let’s begin where Ellen Muehlberger does. In the very first chapter, she introduces a scene that is deceptively ordinary: a boy, about fourteen, sitting in a classroom somewhere in the late ancient Mediterranean—Antioch, perhaps—who is working through an assignment. He is asked to compose a speech in character, to answer a question that is both precise and conceptually unstable: “What would a prostitute who has come to her senses say?”
I recall being a newly minted PhD, well over a decade ago, trading Syriac vocabulary decks with Ellen, whom I regarded as an established scholar in the field. Several years later, I received insightful comments from her on translations I contributed to the series Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings, which she and Brad edited. It is, therefore, an honor to return the favor today by engaging with her work in this forum. Let me also say I am pleased to see an entire session devoted to her book.