Imagine a world without things. There would be nothing to describe, nothing to explain, remark, interpret, or complain about. Without things, we wouldstop speaking; we would become as mute as things are alleged to be. In nine originalessays, internationally renowned historians of art and of science seek to understandhow objects become charged with significance without losing their grittymateriality. True to the particularity of things, each of the essays singles out oneobject for close attention: a Bosch drawing, the freestanding column, a Prussianisland, soap bubbles, early photographs, glass flowers, Rorschach blots, newspaperclippings, paintings by Jackson Pollock. Each is revealed to be a node around whichmeanings accrete thickly. But not just any meanings: what these things are made ofand how they are made shape what they can mean. Neither the pure texts of semioticsnor the brute objects of positivism, these things are saturated with culturalsignificance. Things become talkative when they fuse matter and meaning; they lapseinto speechlessness when their matter and meanings no longer mesh. Each of the nineobjects examined in this book had its historical moment, when the match of thisthing to that thought seemed irresistible. At these junctures, certain things becomeobjects of fascination, association, and endless consideration; they begin to talk.Things that talk fleetingly realize the dream of a perfect language, in which wordsand world merge.Essays Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison, Anke te Heesen, Caroline A.Jones, Joseph Leo Koerner, Antoine Picon, Simon Schaffer, Joel Snyder, and M. Nortonand Elaine M. Wise. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for theHistory of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Orderof Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone Books).