Analogous Apes

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-53
Author(s):  
Ashley Clements
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Classical Philology

From the dissection table of a London physician to the tropical forests of Borneo and Sumatra, this chapter places the reader amidst the bestiary of Classical animals populating seventeenth-century scientific responses to the problem of the anthropoid ape. The anatomical puzzle of a strangely man-like creature recently arrived to British shores from the Congo inadvertently reveals the influence of Classical figurations in early-modern European conceptions of the human and animal. Guided by ‘indigenous’ idioms and simian similitude, a perplexed comparative anatomist resorts to Classical philology and the authority of Homer to posit a new non-human anthropoid species also known to the ancients.

Language Matters: ‘Counsel’ in Early Modern and Modern Medicine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Sabroe ◽  
Phil Withington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Successful Scientist

Francis Bacon is famous today as one of the founding fathers of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century. Although not an especially successful scientist himself, he was nevertheless the most eloquent and influential spokesperson for an approach to knowledge that promised to transform human understanding of both humanity and its relationship with the natural and social worlds. The central features of this approach, as they emerged in Bacon’s own writings and the work of his protégés and associates after 1605, are equally well known. They include the importance of experiment, observation, and a sceptical attitude towards inherited wisdom (from the ‘ancients’ in general and Aristotle in particular).

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.

Orthodox Radicals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Baptist Identity ◽  
Ongoing Project

Orthodox Radicals explores the origins and identity of Baptists during the English Revolution (1640–1660), arguing that mid-seventeenth century Baptists did not, in fact, understand themselves to be part of a larger, all-encompassing “Baptist” movement. Contrary to both the explicit statements of many historians and the tacit suggestion embedded in the very use of “Baptist” as an overarching historical category, the early modern men and women who rejected infant baptism would not have initially understood that single theological move as being in itself constitutive of a new group identity. Rather, the rejection of infant baptism was but one of a number of doctrinal revisions then taking place among English puritans eager to further their ongoing project of godly reformation. Orthodox Radicals thus complicates our understanding of Baptist identity and addresses broader themes including early modern religious toleration, the mechanisms by which early modern groups defined and defended themselves, and the perennial problem of historical anachronism. By combining a provocative reinterpretation Baptist identity with close readings of key theological and political texts, Orthodox Radicals offers the most original and stimulating analysis of mid-seventeenth century Baptists in decades.

Stuart Succession Literature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Distinct Category ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Distinguished Group ◽  
Modern British Literature

Moments of royal succession, which punctuated the Stuart era (1603–1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefiting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Bjørn Okholm Skaarup, Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (Farnham/Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2015), xii + 285pp. ISBN: 9781471448162

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Nutton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Spain

This chapter reviews the book Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (2015), by Bjørn Okholm Skaarup. The book traces the development of anatomy in Spain and Mexico from 1500 to the end of the seventeenth century. Skaarup cites particular instances where the Spanish experience can contribute substantially to wider debates, including Juan Tomas Porcell’s autopsies of plague victims in a hospital at Zaragoza in 1568 and the detailed plan of 1586 for a ‘house of anatomy’ there. He challenges O’Malley’s exaggerated description, based on Vesalius’s comments on his time in Spain between 1559 and 1561, that doctors and surgeons lack interest in anatomy. Skaarup reveals the difficulties faced by those who wished to introduce dissection as an essential part of the education of a doctor, as well as the objections that might be made.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

Johannine Dualism, Antinomianism, and Early Modern English Radical Dissent

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cefalu
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Richard Crashaw ◽  
Broad Group ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Henry Vaughan

Johannine theology exerts a wide influence on a broad group of antinomian writers and mid-seventeenth-century English separatists, including the Familists, Diggers, Quakers, and a range of English mystics and spiritual enthusiasts. This chapter looks closely at the embrace of the most dualistic and eschatological passages of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle by the English radical tradition. After an outline of the distinctive qualities of this Johannine political theology, the chapter turns to the antinomian influence on two radically different English poets, Richard Crashaw and Henry Vaughan. If Crashaw shows antinomian leanings despite his embrace of Laudian fundamentals, Vaughan emerges as something of an anti-enthusiast in his more politically topical poems of Silex Scintillans.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
The Body ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Disciplinary Field ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Integral Feature

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance is the first collection of essays to examine the relationship between William Shakespeare and dance. Despite recent academic interest in movement, materiality, and the body—and the growth of dance studies as a disciplinary field—Shakespeare’s employment of dance as both a theatrical device and thematic reference point remains under-studied. The reimagining of his writing as dance works is also neglected as a subject for research. Alan Brissenden’s 1981 Shakespeare and the Dance remains the seminal text for those interested in early modern dancing and its appearances within Shakespearean drama, but this new volume provides a single source of reference for dance as both an integral feature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and as a means of translating Shakespearean text into movement.

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