scholarly journals Magnetism for Librarians. Leone Allacci’s De Magnete (1625) and its Relation to Giulio Cesare LaGalla’s Disputatio de Sympathia et Antipathia (1623)

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-307
Author(s):  
Christoph Sander
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Comprehensive Literature Review ◽  
Modern Knowledge

The investigation of magnetic phenomena played a crucial role for the emergence of an experimental approach to natural philosophy in the early modern period. William Gilbert’s De magnete, in particular, and Leonardo Garzoni’s Due trattati, are taken to herald this development. This article brings to light a contrasting approach to magnetism, by analyzing an extensive and hitherto unknown study on the magnet by the Vatican librarian Leone Allacci, and its relation to Giulio Cesare LaGalla’s Disputatio de sympathia et antipathia (1623). Allacci’s De magnete (1625) which survives in a single manuscript, offers a comprehensive literature review on early modern knowledge about the magnet in a variety of disciplines, including natural history, natural philosophy, navigational science, natural magic, and medicine. Allacci incorporates Greek Byzantine authors as well into his doxographical anthology, and he commends the Paracelsian ‘weapon salve,’ which was condemned by most Catholics at his time.

The economy of nature in the botany of Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712)

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Anker
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Book Of Nature ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Mechanical Reasoning ◽  
Laboratory Life ◽  
Economy Of Nature

Historians of natural history often point to the emergence of mathematical and mechanical reasoning in the early-modern period as a pivotal episode in scientifi c understanding of the organic world. This paper visits the natural philosophy of one of the chief supporters of this view of nature, the first curator of plants at The Royal Society, Nehemiah Grew. It sets his work within the material world of patronage, medical and mathematical tools, laboratory life, and his views on human virtues, health and the role of women. The view taken is of Grew as a religiously informed natural philosopher whose understanding of the economy of nature acknowledges the wisdom of the Creator and the possibility of gaining spiritual and bodily health from studying the language of the book of nature. The quest to understand nature's language consisted in tempering human will and arrogance so that one could appreciate the Lord's creative power in the world. As representative of The Royal Society's promotion of empirical and mechanical research, Grew mobilized excitement for natural history and botany with an ethos of showing respect to nature's economy.

scholarly journals Circulation of images and graphic practices in Renaissance natural history: the example of Conrad Gessner

Gesnerus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-72
Author(s):  
Florike Egmond ◽  
Sachiko Kusukawa
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Actual Mechanism ◽  
Multiple Copies ◽  
Circulation Of Knowledge

Conrad Gessner’s Historia animalium is a compilation of information from a variety of sources: friends, correspondents, books, broadsides, drawings, as well as his own experience. The recent discovery of a cache of drawings at Amsterdam originally belonging to Gessner has added a new dimension for research into the role of images in Gessner’s study of nature. In this paper, we examine the drawings that were the basis of the images in the volume of fishes. We uncovered several cases where there were multiple copies of the same drawing of a fish (rather than multiple drawings of the same fish), which problematizes the notion of unique “original” copies and their copies. While we still know very little about the actual mechanism of, or people involved in, commissioning or generating copies of drawings, their very existence suggests that the images functioned as an important medium in the circulation of knowledge in the early modern period.

Bacon’s Novum organum

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-46
Author(s):  
Elodie Cassan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Way

Dan Garber’s paper provides materials permitting to reply to an objection frequently made to the idea that the Novum Organum is a book of logic, as the allusion to Aristotle’s Organon included in the very title of this book shows it is. How can Bacon actually build a logic, considering his repeated claims that he desires to base natural philosophy directly on observation and experiment? Garber shows that in the Novum Organum access to experience is always mediated by particular questions and settings. If there is no direct access to observation and experience, then there is no point in equating Bacon’s focus on experience in the Novum Organum with a rejection of discursive issues. On the contrary, these are two sides of the same coin. Bacon’s articulation of rules for the building of scientific reasoning in connection with the way the world is, illustrates his massive concern with the relation between reality, thinking and language. This concern is essential in the field of logic as it is constructed in the Early Modern period.

scholarly journals Negotiating natural history in transitional China and British India

BJHS Themes ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
FA-TI FAN ◽  
JOHN MATHEW
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
British India ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
China And India ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Transitional China

AbstractThis article examines scientific developments in China and India by comparing and contrasting the enterprises of natural history during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From this perspective, the cases of China and India shared some similarities, but also exhibited important differences with respect to the conditions, ideologies, personnel, processes and strategies in scientific development. Two very large countries, with much left unexplored, attracted broad scientific interest in their flora and fauna from the early modern period; the interest intensified in the nineteenth century because of increasing accessibility to their interiors. However, the different historical situations that involved empire, nation, professionalization, geography and domestic and international politics helped shape the respective trajectories of scientific development in the two countries. Yet, despite their differences, China and India shared important similarities in the co-production of science and state, the global hierarchy of knowledge production, and the coloniality of power relations. This historical complexity also represented an important aspect of the global history of science, one that still bears poignancy and resonance in the contemporary world.

The Concept “Fact”: Legal Origins and Cultural Diffusion

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Origins ◽  
Cultural Diffusion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Fact Finding

Facts are something we take for granted, at least most of the time. As ordinary individuals we assume that there are knowable facts, for instance, that the dog chewed the drapes, that England exists, that it rained yesterday, or that babies cry. If, as scholars, that is as historians, social scientists, and natural scientists, we are more aware of the problematical nature of “facts” we nevertheless tend to establish and use facts rather unselfconsciously in our work. On this occasion I want to look at the evolution of the concept of “fact,” and in particular the way “fact” entered English natural philosophy. I will attempt to show that the concept of “fact” or “matter of fact,” so prominent in the English empirical tradition, is an adaptation or borrowing from another discipline—jurisprudence, and that many of the assumptions and much of the technology of fact-finding in law were carried over into the experimental science of the seventeenth century.My paper has three parts. The first discusses the nature of legal facts and fact-finding in the early modern period, focusing on the distinction between “matters of fact” and “matters of law,” the emphasis on first hand testimony by credible witnesses, the preference for direct testimony over inference, and legal efforts to create and maintain impartial proceedings. The second portion attempts to show how legal methods and assumptions were adopted by early modern historiographers and other fact-oriented reporters. The third section attempts to show how the legally constructed concept of “fact” or “matter of fact” was transferred to natural history and natural philosophy and generalized in Locke's empirical philosophy.

philosophy, early modern reception of

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Corrias
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Impact

The early modern period saw a tremendous revival in interest in ancient philosophy. New Platonic texts became available. New ways of analyzing Aristotle were explored. Stoic and Epicurean philosophy began to exert an influence on key thinkers. The impact of ancient philosophy was felt in a number of key areas, these included natural history, theology, and epistemology.

Jacques Rohault and Cartesian Experimentalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 387-401
Author(s):  
Mihnea Dobre
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Practical Mathematics ◽  
One Year ◽  
Mature Work ◽  
Early Activity

This chapter explores the intellectual development of Jacques Rohault—although not considered one of the leading figures of the early modern period, well known among historians of science. It attempts to evaluate Rohault’s Cartesianism and to present it in a more nuanced manner than it is usually illustrated in the literature. Focusing on his mature work, published only one year before his death in 1672, but also referring to his earlier activities in Paris and to the publication of his posthumous works, the chapter argues that his “Cartesianism” came rather late in his thinking, while his early activity concerns mathematics and mechanics. The reading endorsed in this chapter opens a fresh perspective on Rohault’s experimentalism, suggesting a transition from practical mathematics to Cartesian natural philosophy.

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