scholarly journals Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Neville
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Book Trade ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Renaissance England ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Rich Material ◽  
Material Artifacts

Between 1525 and 1640, a remarkable phenomenon occurred in the world of print: England saw the production of more than two dozen editions identified by their imprints or by contemporaries as 'herbals'. Sarah Neville explains how this genre grew from a series of tiny anonymous octavos to authoritative folio tomes with thousands of woodcuts, and how these curious works quickly became valuable commodities within a competitive print marketplace. Designed to serve readers across the social spectrum, these rich material artifacts represented both a profitable investment for publishers and an opportunity for authors to establish their credibility as botanists. Highlighting the shifting contingencies and regulations surrounding herbals and English printing during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the book argues that the construction of scientific authority in Renaissance England was inextricably tied up with the circumstances governing print. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core at doi.org/10.1017/9781009031615.

Divine Machines

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Living World ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Generation Theory

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. This book offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. The book shows how these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines. Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, the book takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here it reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. The book casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era.

Sensual Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo F. Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Black Caribbean ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Landscapes

This chapter proposes a novel approach to our understanding of sensing and being in the early modern Atlantic world. Early modern black Caribbean ritual practitioners intensely fashioned new “forms of being in the world.” There exist, after all, multiple manners of sensing and shaping an apparently stubborn reality. The chapter shows how black Mohanes fundamentally fashioned novel ways of sensing the early modern Caribbean world. In the absence of common linguistic and cultural grounds, the chapter shows, black Caribbean ritual practitioners became involved in a new sensorial imbrication of Atlantic threads of all origins. It was through this essential process that Caribbean Mohanes fashioned routes for making perceivable the spiritual and social landscapes of their new land. These paths and ways of sensing were fundamental for the modeling of the experiential revolution of the seventeenth-century Caribbean.

The Making of a Success Story

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-32
Author(s):  
Stefania Tutino
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
The Social ◽  
Kingdom Of Naples ◽  
High Ranking Official ◽  
Main Protagonist ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter introduces the main protagonist of the book: Carlo Calà Duke of Diano, a jurist and high-ranking official in the viceregal administration. This chapter also sets the historical context of the story of the forgery by describing the main political, economic, social, and religious characteristics of the Kingdom of Naples in the seventeenth century. More specifically, this chapter explains the social, cultural, and intellectual advantages that a noble pedigree conferred to the Neapolitan non-aristocratic elites; explores the main sources of tension between the papacy and the Neapolitan viceroy; sheds light on the power dynamics between the Roman Inquisition and the local ecclesiastical leaders; and introduces the complexities of the liturgical and devotional life of early modern Catholics.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
To Come ◽  
Considerable Body

Ushering the reader into both the world of early modern radical religion and the considerable body of scholarly literature devoted to its study, the introduction offers a précis of what is to come and a backward glance to explain how the proposed journey contributes to ongoing scholarly conversations. After orienting readers to the basic methodological boundaries within which the book will operate and briefly situating the book within the wider historiography, the introduction adumbrates the shape of the work as a whole and encapsulates its central argument. The introduction contends that the mid-seventeenth-century men and women often described as “Particular Baptists” would not have readily understood themselves as such. This tension between the self-identity of the early modern actors and the identity imposed upon them by future scholars has significant implications for how we understand both radical religion during the English Revolution and the period more broadly.

The Sea and the World of the Mutasaddi: A profile of port officials from Mughal Gujarat (c. 1600–1650)

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
JORGE FLORES
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social World ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
The Social ◽  
Business Politics ◽  
The World

AbstractThis article seeks to trace the profile of the governors (mutasaddis) of the main port-cities (especially Surat and, to a lesser extent, Cambay) of the Mughal province of Gujarat in the first half of the seventeenth century. My research on the careers of individual mutasaddis – based mainly (but not exclusively) on existent Portuguese materials – allows us to better understand the social world of those occupying key positions in the ‘waterfront’ of the Mughal Empire and its dealings extensively with the European powers (Portuguese, Dutch and English). Hence, the analysis of the professional and personal trajectories of the Indian Muslim doctor Muqarrab Khan and the Persian Mir Musa Mu'izzul Mulk presented here demonstrate how far business, politics and cultural patronage were often entangled in the career of a Mughal mutasaddi of Gujarat.

Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Chomel (1671–1740): A Case Study in Problems Relating to the Social Status of Scientists in the Early Modern Period

1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-322
Author(s):  
David Sturdy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practice Of Science

Consider this statement: the practice of science influences and is influenced by the civilization within which it occurs. Or again: scientists do not pursue their activities in a political or social void; like other people, they aspire to make their way in the world by responding to the values and social mechanisms of their day. Set in such simple terms, each statement probably would receive the assent of most scholars interested in the history of science. But there is need for debate on the nature and extent of the interaction between scientific activity and the civilization which incorporates it, as there is on the relations of scientists to the society within which they live. This essay seeks to make a contribution mainly to the second of these topics by taking a French scientist and academician of the eighteenth century and studying him and his family in the light of certain questions. At the end there will be a discussion relating those questions or themes to the wider debate. There is an associated purpose to the exercise: to present an account of the social origins and formation of Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Chomel (botanist, physician and member of the Academic des Sciences) which will augment our knowledge of this particular savant.

The World the Bedouin Lived in: Climate, Migration and Politics in the Early Modern Arab East

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier ◽  
Tariq Tell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Marginal Zones

Environmental history provides a perspective from which we can deepen our understanding of the past because it examines the relationships of people with their material surroundings and the effects of those relationships on the individual as well as the societal level. It is a perspective that holds particular promise for the social and political history of arid and marginal zones, as it contributes to our understanding of the reason some groups are more successful than others in coping with the same environmental stresses. Historians working on the early modern Arab East have only recently engaged with the lively field of global environmental history. After presenting a brief overview of some strands of this research, this article illustrates the potential of this approach by looking closely at a series of conflicts involving Bedouin and other power groups in the southern parts of Bilād al-Shām around the middle of the eighteenth century.

Divine Illumination, Mechanical Calculators, and the Roots of Modern Reason

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dear
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Inferential Reasoning ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mechanical Reasoning ◽  
Divine Illumination ◽  
Natural Philosophers

ArgumentTalk of “reason” and “rationality” has been perennial in the philosophy and sciences of the European, Latin tradition since antiquity. But the use of these terms in the early-modern period has left especial marks on the specialties and disciplines that emerged as components of “science” in the modern world. By examining discussions by seventeenth-century philosophers, including natural philosophers such as Descartes, Pascal, and Hobbes, the practical meanings of, specifically, inferential reasoning can be seen as reducing, for most, to intellectual processes deriving from foundations that required intuitional insight that was owing to God. Mechanical reasoning, or artificial intelligence, was a contradiction in terms for such as Pascal, whose views of his own arithmetical machine illustrate the issue well. Hobbes’ analysis of reason, however, replaced the ineffable authority of God with the authority of the civil power, to reveal the social reality of “reason” as nothing other than authorized judgment.

Depictions of the Journey to the Heavenly Realm in Early Modern Catholic and Japanese Buddhist Iconography

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 135-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoko Frances Hioki
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
The World ◽  
Folding Screens ◽  
The Church

This article works to identify an intersection of the Catholic and Buddhist pictorial traditions with regard to the symbolism of the journey to the spiritual world. In both Christian and Buddhist traditions, the river/ ocean is a popular symbol that designates the border between this world and the other world. A work of western-inspired Japanese folding screens known as Yōjin Sōgakuzu (Europeans Playing Music) is an outstanding example that makes use of the symbolism of the river to allude to one’s pilgrimage to the other world in the guise of a secular waterfront scene. The folding screens were painted in the seventeenth century by Japanese artists who were affiliated with the art studio founded by the Jesuits. An investigation of European sources of the painting will show how the painters modified the famous Catholic iconography of “The Ship of the Church” to match the taste of the Japanese patrons of the time. Further, comparisons with other Japanese paintings that similarly deal with the theme of the river will show that such secular scenes of waterfront leisure could demonstrate to the Japanese audience the life in the world beyond, as well as a journey to that world they anticipated.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document