The Plain Style, Plane Chart Navigation and the Paradox of Disinterestedness

Questions of style gained currency in the sixteenth century as the process of discipline formation turned an inclusive field of inquiry, natural philosophy, into increasingly specialised branches of knowledge. As these branches vied with each other for patronage and recognition, style became an important marker to claim a discipline’s merit. Hence, stylistic choices are located at the crossroads of (vested) interest and inclusive systems of knowledge. The logic that governed these choices can be discerned exemplarily when we consider conceptions of the plain style in navigational treatises. While the plain style is commonly described as a rhetorical technique employed in early modern natural philosophy in order to probe into the relation between language and matter, the focus here is on the implications of the plain style as a rhetorical gesture and strategy. The contribution examines the use of the plain style in textbooks on navigation that discuss the mathematics of ‘great circle sailing’ in order to reflect on this connection between the plain style and ‘disinterested knowledge’. It demonstrates how and explains why textbooks such as Hood’s Marriners Guide (1592) or Davis’ The Seaman’s Secret (1595) propagated a concept of scientific knowledge that was plain in the sense of disinterested.