The Printing Press: Fixity, Piracy, and the Manufacture of Credit

For early modern readers, a printed book was a source of uncertainty. They had to investigate "where it had come from, who had made it, and whether its author acknowledged it" before they could trust the text.

Piracy was an epistemic threat. A pirate who swapped a diagram in a scientific book to save on woodcuts wasn't just stealing profit — they were "unauthorizing" the scientist's expertise by circulating false data under their name.

Tycho installed his own printing press inside his observatory, Uraniborg, on the island of Hven. By controlling the full cycle — observing stars, manufacturing paper and ink — he ensured no unauthorized errors could creep into his data. His expertise was physically tied to his island.

While printing Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo first called Jupiter's moons the "Cosmian stars" to flatter Cosimo de' Medici. After feedback he changed them to the "Medicean stars" — and since some pages were already printed, he had to paste the new name over the old. A literal patching of expertise mid-production.

In the 1631 Wicked Bible, the Royal Printers accidentally omitted the word "not" from "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The catastrophe cost them their license and huge fines — proving that authority was not a feature of the press, but a fragile result of constant human vigilance.

A printer with bad credit made suspicious books. Authority migrated from the Author to the Stationer: a book was trusted because of the social standing of the person who sold it.

In 17th-century London coffeehouses, readers compared multiple versions of news and pamphlets side-by-side to "try all things" (Milton, Areopagitica). Expertise was a public conversation.

Today we safely assume two copies of a University of Chicago Press book are identical. In 1650, you couldn't. Fixity arrived only when the Stationers' Company enforced strict rules about how many copies could be made and how they were checked.

Archbishop William Laud (1630s) worried that "mechanick" printers cared more about profit than accuracy. He tried to move printing into Oxford so the credit of the institution would protect the text. The printer, he knew, was a manufacturer of credit.

The Wicked Bible (1631) wasn't just a typo — it was an epistemic disaster. With no easy way to verify which Bible was correct at a distance, the error called into question the reliability of all printed scripture.

Tycho Brahe refused to let his data be printed by city shops. He built his own press inside Uraniborg — because for his observations to be true, he had to control the nature of the book at the exact site where the stars were observed.