Cristiano Zanetti. Janello Torriani and the Spanish Empire: A Vitruvian Artisan at the Dawn of the Scientific Revolution. (Nuncius Series: Studies and Sources in the Material and Visual History of Science, 2.) xi + 450 pp., illus., bibl., index. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017. €110 (cloth). ISBN 9789004320895.

Isis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-166
Author(s):  
Juan Pimentel
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
Michael Segre

Abstract This article endeavors to contribute to a better understanding of the literary contexts of early biographies of scientists written during the Scientific Revolution. To what extent are these biographies influenced by stereotypes that are an inadequate fit for modern history of science? Its claim is that there was, indeed, a literary model for biographies of scientists, and that this model had deep roots in Biblical and classical literature. While the model was similar to that used in Renaissance biographies of artists, it did not fully emerge until as late as the seventeenth century.


Author(s):  
Staffan Müller-Wille

This article explores what both historians of medicine and historians of science could gain from a stronger entanglement of their respective research agendas. It first gives a cursory outline of the history of the relationship between science and medicine since the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. Medicine can very well be seen as a domain that was highly productive of scientific knowledge, yet in ways that do not fit very well with the historiographic framework that dominated the history of science. Furthermore, the article discusses two alternative historiographical approaches that offer ways of thinking about the growth of knowledge that fit well with the cumulative and translational patterns that characterize the development of the medical sciences, and also provide an understanding of concepts such as ‘health’ and ‘life’.


2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
LORRAINE DASTON

Since the Enlightenment, the history of science has been enlisted to show the unity and distinctiveness of Europe. This paper, written on the occasion of the award of the 2005 Erasmus Prize to historians of science Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin, traces the intertwined narratives of the history of science and European modernity from the 18th century to the present. Whether understood as triumph or tragedy (and there have been eloquent proponents of both views), the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as Europe's decisive break with tradition – the first such break in world history and the model for all subsequent epics of modernization in other cultures. The paper concludes with reflections on how a new history of science, exemplified in the work of Shapin and Schaffer, may transform the self-image of Europe and conceptions of truth itself.


Author(s):  
Ciro Tomazella Ferreira ◽  
Cibelle Celestino Silva

In this paper, we present an analysis of the evolution of the history of science as a discipline focusing on the role of the mathematization of nature as a historiographical perspective. Our study is centered in the mathematization thesis, which considers the rise of a mathematical approach of nature in the 17th century as being the most relevant event for scientific development. We begin discussing Edmund Husserl whose work, despite being mainly philosophical, is relevant for having affected the emergence of the narrative of the mathematization of nature and due to its influence on Alexandre Koyré. Next, we explore Koyré, Dijksterhuis, and Burtt’s works, the historians from the 20th century responsible for the elaboration of the main narratives about the Scientific Revolution that put the mathematization of science as the protagonist of the new science. Then, we examine the reframing of the mathematization thesis with the narrative of two traditions developed by Thomas S. Kuhn and Richard Westfall, in which the mathematization of nature shares space with other developments taken as equally relevant. We conclude presenting contemporary critical perspectives on the mathematization thesis and its capacity for synthesizing scientific development.


Author(s):  
Anna Cetera-Włodarczyk ◽  
Jarosław Włodarczyk

Shakespeare appears to be one of the most intensely studied authors exemplifying mutual influence of literature and science. Significantly enough, astronomical references deserve a particular attention due to the spectacular change of paradigm resulting from the replacement of the concept of the geocentric cosmos with the concept of the heliocentric universe. Starting from some general remarks concerning the methodological assumptions of such analyses and the specificity of Shakespeare canon, the paper offers an in-depth study of Anthony and Cleopatra  as one of the most representative plays with regard to the number, suggestiveness and interpretative potential of astronomical references. The paper exemplifies the way in which the play combines traditional astronomical and astrological allusions with some unconventional images, usually featuring imaginative hyperboles, which inscribe the fate and feelings of the characters into a cosmic framework. These references repeatedly trigger some fascinating and yet risky interpretations which strive to present Shakespeare as part of the scientific revolution of the age. Refraining from any value judgment, the paper highlights the overall importance of reading Renaissance literature, and Shakespeare in particular, against the background of the history of science in a way which allows for precise identification of contemporary sources of astronomical knowledge as well as for the reconstruction of the actual paths of dissemination of such ideas.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. R. Lloyd

This book challenges the common assumption that the predominant focus of the history of science should be the achievements of Western scientists since the so-called Scientific Revolution. The conceptual frameworks within which the members of earlier societies and of modern indigenous groups worked admittedly pose severe problems for our understanding. But rather than dismiss them on the grounds that they are incommensurable with our own and to that extent unintelligible, we should see them as offering opportunities for us to revise many of our own preconceptions. We should accept that the realities to be accounted for are multi-dimensional and that all such accounts are to some extent value-laden. In the process insights from current anthropology and the study of ancient Greece and China especially are brought to bear to suggest how the remit of the history of science can be expanded to achieve a cross-cultural perspective on the problems.


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