Introduction: In Praise of Toothing-Stones

Abstract

For the history of science, 1543 is—by virtue of general consent and plain historiographical logic alike—the veritable annus mirabilis of the sixteenth century. It is not simply the fact that Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) and Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) were published in 1543 that renders the year remarkable, but that it marks the epiphany (rather than the nativity, much less the conception) of what might usefully be termed the ‘Proto-Scientific Revolution’; that period, essentially High Renaissance in character, which makes straight the way for the Scientific Revolution.KeywordsSeventeenth CenturySixteenth CenturyScientific RevolutionFifteenth CenturyFourteenth CenturyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.