Naturalia : the history of natural history and medicine in the seventeenth century

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Sociable Knowledge: Natural History and the Nation in Early Modern Britain. Elizabeth Yale. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Pp. xii+346. Consider this depiction of “An Antiquary” offered by John Earle (ca.1600–1665), bishop of Salisbury: “A great admirer he is of the rust of old Monuments. … Printed bookes he contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age; but a Manu-script he pores on everlastingly, especially if the cover be all Moth-eaten, and the dust make a Parenthesis between every Syllable.”1 Written before some of the people in the book under review were born, Earle’s caricature catches aspects of their behavior, but only superficially. Men such as Elias Ashmole, John Aubrey, Anthony Wood, Edward Lhuyd, John Evelyn, and Robert Plot cannot be fully captured by the label “antiquary,” in part because their interests embraced natural history, and also because they did not work alone, as Earle implied. They were linked by correspondence in intellectual collaboration, using both manuscript and print.

Notes on Contributors

Previous article FreeNotes on ContributorsCorrections to this articleErrataPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreTina Adcock received her Ph.D. from the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. She specializes in the history of science, exploration, and travel in the modern North American Arctic.Gerardo Aldana is Professor of Anthropology and [email protected] at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His interests broadly consider the sciences of ancient Mesoamerica but focus on the astronomy recorded in Mayan hieroglyphic texts. He is working on the historical contextualization of scientific discovery within the Dresden Codex Venus Table.Gerardo Aldana is Professor of Anthropology and [email protected] at UCSB. His interests broadly consider the sciences of ancient Mesoamerica, but focus on the astronomy recorded in Mayan hieroglyphic texts. He is currently working on the historical contextualization of scientific discovery within the Dresden Codex Venus Table.Brian Balmer is Professor of Science Policy Studies in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London. His research interests combine historical and sociological approaches and include the history of chemical and biological warfare, the history of the “brain drain,” and the role of volunteers in biomedical research.Trevor Barnes is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. His research interests are in the history of twentieth-century geographical thought.Richard H. Beyler teaches history of science, intellectual history, and German history at Portland State University in Oregon. His research focuses on the political history of scientific institutions in twentieth-century Germany and on the history of biophysics before the rise of molecular biology.Karin Bijsterveld, a historian, is a professor in the Department of Technology and Society Studies at Maastricht University. She is the coeditor (with Trevor Pinch) of The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Oxford, 2012) and the author of Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (MIT, 2008).Francesca Bordogna is Associate Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she is also a fellow of the Reilly Center for the History and Philosophy of Science. She is the author of William James at the Boundaries (Chicago, 2008) and is now working on a book on pragmatism in early twentieth-century Italy.Anastasios Brenner is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Paul Valéry—Montpellier 3. His research focuses on the history of philosophy of science, mainly on the French tradition, as well as the current relevance of historical epistemology. His most recent book is Raison scientifique et valeurs humaines (Presses Universitaires de France, 2011).Sonja Brentjes is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. Her areas of research are the history of science, cartography, and institutions and cross-cultural exchange of knowledge in Islamicate societies and the Mediterranean world (8th–17th centuries).John Hedley Brooke is Professor Emeritus of Science and Religion at Oxford University. He has published extensively on history of chemistry, Victorian science, and the historical relations between science and religion. His latest book, edited with Ronald Numbers, is Science and Religion around the World (Oxford, 2011).Mark B. Brown is a professor in the Department of Government at California State University, Sacramento. He is the author of Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (MIT Press, 2009), as well as various publications on the politics of expertise, citizen participation, bioethics, climate change, and related topics.Stephen T. Casper ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at Clarkson University. His research focuses on the history of neurology, neuroscience, and physiology, topics on which he has published two books as well as several articles, essays, and reviews.Pratik Chakrabarti, Reader in History at the University of Kent, has published widely on history of science, medicine, and imperialism. His works include Materials and Medicine: Trade, Conquest, and Therapeutics in the Eighteenth Century and Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics. He is an editor of Social History of Medicine.Cristina Chimisso (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/philosophy/chimisso.shtml) is Senior Lecturer in European Studies and Philosophy at the Open University, United Kingdom. She is the author of Writing the History of the Mind: Philosophy and Science in France, 1900 to 1960s (Ashgate, 2008), and Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination (Routledge, 2001).Deborah R. Coen is an associate professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the author, most recently, of The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter (University of Chicago Press, 2013).Claudine Cohen, a philosopher and historian of earth and life sciences, holds professorships in science at the EPHE (Life and Earth Science Section) and in the humanities at the EHESS (Center for Language and Arts) in Paris. Her publications include Science, libertinage et clandestinité à l'aube des Lumières: Le transformisme de Telliamed (Presses Universitaires de France, 2011), La méthode de Zadig: La trace, le fossile, la preuve (Seuil, 2011), The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myths, and History (Chicago, 2002), and the first translation of Leibniz's Protogaea (with André Wakefield [Chicago, 2008]). In 2012 she was awarded the Eugen Wegmann Prize of the French Geological Society for her work in the history of geosciences.Roger Cooter is Honorary Professor in the Department of History at University College London. His latest book, Writing History in the Age of Biomedicine (Yale, 2013), was written with Claudia Stein. With her he is now working on a study of capitalism, biopolitics, and hygiene in Germany and Britain from the late nineteenth century.Andrew Ede is a historian of science specializing in history of chemistry. He is the Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program and also teaches in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.Michael Egan (McMaster University) is the author of Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (MIT Press, 2007). He is especially interested in the toxic century and is now at work on a global history of mercury pollution since World War II.Roger Emerson is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario, where he taught from 1964 to 1999. He is known for studies of the Scottish Enlightenment. His latest book, published in 2013, is a biography of an amateur scientist, improver, and politician: Archibald Campbell, third Duke of Argyll (1682–1761).Sterling Evans holds the Louise Welsh Chair in Southern Plains and Borderlands History at the University of Oklahoma. His research interests include environmental history, agricultural history, and borderlands history of North America and Latin America. He is the author of The Green Republic (1999) and Bound in Twine (2007).Paul Lawrence Farber is Oregon State University Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He does research on the history of natural history, racism, and evolution. His most recent book is Mixing Races: From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas (2011).Steve Fuller holds the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick. He has authored more than twenty books, with two appearing in 2014: The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (with Veronika Lipinska) and Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History.Alan Gabbey is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Barnard College, Columbia University. He is completing a book on Spinoza (Oxford University Press) and working on a book on mechanical philosophy in the early modern period.Cathy Gere is Associate Professor of History of Science at the University of California, San Diego. She is now working on a book about utilitarianism and the sciences of pain and pleasure.Pamela Gossin, Professor of History of Science and Literary Studies and the Director of Medical and Scientific Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, is writing two essays on nineteenth-century British literature and astronomy and creating a digital archive of the correspondence and scientific and literary essays of John G. Neihardt.Jean-Baptiste Gouyon is a science and technology scholar with a deep interest in the history of science in its public contexts. His research focuses on film, television, and museums as popular scientific media. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of York.Rich Hamerla is Associate Dean of the Honors College and Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma. In addition to his work in the history of chemistry, he teaches classes on Weapons of Mass Destruction and science and the Cold War and has publications addressing biological weapons.Darin Hayton is Associate Professor of the History of Science at Haverford College.John Henry is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Edinburgh. He recently published a collection of earlier research, Religion, Magic, and the Origins of Science in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2012), and an introductory textbook, A Short History of Scientific Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).Noah Heringman is Professor of English at the University of Missouri. His publications include Romantic Rocks, Aesthetic Geology (2004) and Sciences of Antiquity: Romantic Antiquarianism, Natural History, and Knowledge Work (2013).Hunter Heyck is Associate Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma, where—much to his surprise—he has recently become department chair. His second book, The Age of System: The Rise and Fracture of High Modern Social Science, has just been accepted for publication by Johns Hopkins University Press.Jan P. Hogendijk is a professor of the history of mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Utrecht. His research interests are the history of the mathematical sciences in ancient Greek and medieval Islamic civilizations and the history of mathematics in the Netherlands between 1600 and 1850.Thierry Hoquet is Professor of Philosophy of Science in the Philosophy Faculty, University of Lyon 3, and a Junior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He specializes in the history of the life sciences, from Buffon to Darwin. He is currently completing a study on the way sex is variously defined by biologists.David A. Hounshell is Roderick Professor of Technology and Social Change at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932 (1984), and “Planning and Executing ‘Automation’ at Ford Motor Company, 1945–1965: The Cleveland Engine Plant and Its Consequences,” in Fordism Transformed: The Development of Production Methods in the Automobile Industry, edited by Haruhito Shiomi and Kazuo Wada (Oxford, 1995).James Hull is an associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia (Kelowna) and an affiliate of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (Toronto). He is Editor of Scientia Canadensis, the journal of the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association.Georgia Irby is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the College of William and Mary. Her research interests include the history of Greek and Roman science and the representation of science, broadly defined, in nonscientific Greco-Roman literature.Douglas M. Jesseph is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics, Squaring the Circle: The War between Hobbes and Wallis, and numerous articles on mathematics, methodology, and philosophy in the early modern period.Andrew Jewett is Associate Professor of History and of Social Studies at Harvard University and the author of Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War (Cambridge, 2012). He is currently a fellow at the National Humanities Center.Ann Johnson is an Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. She works on the history of the physical sciences, engineering, technology, and modern Europe. Her most recent book was: Hitting the Brakes: Engineering Design and the Production of Knowledge (Duke, 2009)Paul Josephson teaches history at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and is the author of the forthcoming Building a Soviet Arctic.Horst Kant studied physics, history, and philosophy of science. Since 1995 he has been a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. His main subjects are history of physics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (especially institutional, social, and biographical aspects) and history of atomic physics.Peter P. Kirschenmann is Professor Emeritus in the Philosophy of the Natural Sciences and Philosophical Ethics at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. He has worked on a great variety of philosophical topics; a selection of his published articles can be found in his Science, Nature, and Ethics: Critical Philosophical Studies (Delft: Eburon, 2001).W. R. Laird is Associate Professor of History at Carleton University, Ottawa, where he teaches medieval history and the history of science. He is the author of The Unfinished Mechanics of Giuseppe Moletti (Toronto, 2000) and coeditor (with Sophie Roux) of Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution (Dordrecht, 2008).Christoph Lüthy directs the Center for the History of Philosophy and Science at Radboud University, Nijmegen. He is particularly interested in the history of natural philosophy and of scientific iconography. In 2012 he published David Gorlaeus (1591–1612): An Enigmatic Figure in the History of Philosophy and Science (Amsterdam University Press).Robert MacDougall is Associate Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario and the author of The People's Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age.Lisa Messeri is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. from MIT's Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society. She is completing a manuscript entitled Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds.Robert G. Morrison is Associate Professor of Religion at Bowdoin College. He is the author of Islam and Science: The Intellectual Career of Ni˙zām al-Dīn al-Nīsābūrī (Routledge, 2007).Stephanie Moser is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. She has published widely on the visual representation of archaeology and the portrayal and reception of the ancient world.Adriana Novoa is a cultural historian whose specialty is science in Latin America. She and Alex Levine have coauthored two books about Darwinism in Argentina (From Man to Monkey and Darwinistas!). Her articles have been published in the Journal of Latin American Studies in Context, the Latinoamericanist, Revista Hispánica Moderna, and elsewhere.Benjamin B. Olshin is Associate Professor of Philosophy, History of Science and Technology, and Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. His research areas include the history of cartography and exploration, ancient science and engineering, the philosophy of contemporary physics, and traditional modes of knowledge transmission.John Parascandola taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before serving as Chief of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and as Public Health Service Historian. He is the author of The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline.Valentina Pugliano is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a Junior Research Fellow at Christ's College, Cambridge. Her work focuses on early modern artisanal practices and the interaction between medicine and science in the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Levant.Nicky Reeves is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, where he is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council–funded project “The Board of Longitude, 1714–1828: Science, Innovation, and Empire in the Georgian World,” conducted in association with the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.Raul Rojas is a professor of computer science in Berlin. He is the founder of the Konrad Zuse Internet Archive, the largest online source of documents and blueprints written or drafted by Konrad Zuse. He is the author of Die Rechenmaschinen von Konrad Zuse (Springer-Verlag, 1998).Nicolaas Rupke is Johnson Professor in the College at Washington and Lee University, having recently retired from the Chair of the History of Science at Göttingen. Among his books are Richard Owen: Biology without Darwin (Chicago, 2009) and Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography (Chicago, 2008). He is now working on the non-Darwinian tradition in evolutionary biology.Dr Juanita Feros Ruys is the Director of the University of Sydney Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions and is currently investigating Scholastic approaches to demonology. Her study of the late poetic works of Peter Abelard will be published by Palgrave in 2014.Tilman Sauer teaches history of science at the University of Bern and is a Senior Editor with the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.John Scarborough is Professor in the School of Pharmacy and the Departments of History and Classics (quondam) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His books include Roman Medicine (1969; 1976) and Pharmacy and Drug Lore in Antiquity: Greece, Rome, Byzantium (2010). He is coeditor (with Paul T. Keyser) of the Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World (forthcoming).Andrew Scull is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His recent books include Madness: A Very Short Introduction, Hysteria: The Disturbing History, and Durkheim and the Law (2nd ed.), with Steven Lukes.J.B. Shank is a graduate of Stanford University with a Ph.D. in European History and Humanities. He is currently completing a book entitled Before Voltaire: Newton, “Newtonianism,” and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment which is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.Ruth Lewin Sime is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Sacramento City College. She is the author of Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics and is now writing a biographical study of Otto Hahn.Daniel Lord Smail is a professor of history at Harvard University, where he works on deep human history and the history and anthropology of Mediterranean societies between 1100 and 1600. His current research approaches transformations in the material culture of later medieval Mediterranean Europe using household inventories and inventories of debt recovery from Lucca and Marseille.Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis is Professor of History of Science at the University of Florida. She is the author of Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology. Her interests include the history of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, genetics, and systematics, and she has published extensively in the history of the botanical sciences in North America.Rudolf Werner Soukup, of the Technische Universität Vienna, works on alchemy and early chemistry, chemical research in the Habsburg Monarchy, and Robert Bunsen's library in Althofen. He is the author of Alchemistisches Gold, Paracelsistische Pharmaka (1997), Die wissenschaftliche Welt von gestern (2004), Chemie in Österreich (2007), and Pioniere der Sexualhormonforschung (2010).David Spanagel is an assistant professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His first book (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming) is a study of the political, material, and cultural contexts of geological ideas in New York State during the early nineteenth century, centering on Amos Eaton.Max Stadler is Chair for Science Studies at ETH Zurich. Professor Stadler works on the history of perception, the nervous system, technology and design. He has published extensively on the history of neuroscience.Larry Stewart is Professor of History and Director of the “Situating Science” node at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of The Rise of Public Science (1992) and, with Margaret Jacob, Practical Matter (2004), as well as various essays on the dissemination of scientific knowledge since Newton. He is now writing a study of experiment during the Enlightenment and the first industrial revolution and is editing, with Erica Dyck, a collection of essays on the use of humans in experiments.Heiko Stoff is Guest Professor for the History of Science and Technology at the Technical University of Braunschweig. He is the author of Ewige Jugend: Konzepte der Verjüngung vom späten 19. Jahrhundert bis ins Dritte Reich (Böhlau, 2004) and Wirkstoffe: Eine Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Hormone, Vitamine und Enzyme, 1920–1970 (Stuttgart, 2012).Bruno J. Strasser is a professor at the University of Geneva and an adjunct professor at Yale University. He is the author of a book on the history of molecular biology in postwar Europe, La fabrique d'une nouvelle science: La biologie moléculaire à l'age aomique, 1945–1964 (Florence, 2006). He is now finishing a book on the history of biomedical collections and databases.Laurence Totelin is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her publications include Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Recipes in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greece (Brill, 2009).Janet Vertesi is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. Her recent research examines NASA's robotic space exploration missions; her book, Seeing Like a in on the is forthcoming from the University of Chicago in is a Fellow at the University of Her publications include the book University Press, and several research on the to the of Her current project with the history of is a professor in the Department of History at the University of California, San Diego. His research is on the cultural history of early modern science, the and of His most recent book is The and is Professor of History and Philosophy at State College in New is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York and a of early modern and the reception of She is the author of at the Origins of (Oxford, and The World Previous article by of the History of Science Society by The History of Science Society. articles this

Notes on Contributors

“New Books across the Disciplines” is a bibliographic resource that facilitates a cross-disciplinary survey of recent publications. Its scope ranges from late antiquity to the seventeenth century. Coverage is comprehensive for the large majority of North American and British publishers. Other European titles are included whenever received. Books are classified under variable topical headings and listed alphabetically by author's name. Entries include complete bibliographical data and annotations. Unless designated for paperback editions, prices given are for cloth editions. For paperback reprint editions, original publication dates are given in parentheses. With few exceptions, books appearing here have been published within the previous two years. Many will be presented here before they are ordered and shelved by libraries. Thanks go to David Aers and Sarah Beckwith for their collegial editorial contribution.The topics for this issue include: Editions and translationsManuscripts and printed booksChurch, reform, and devotionScience and medicineThe natural worldThe everydayAstell, Ann W., and Joseph Wawrykow, eds. Three Pseudo-Bernadine Works. With the assistance of Thomas Clemmons. Translated by members of the Catena Scholarium at the University of Notre Dame. Introduction by Dom Elias Dietz, OCSO. Cistercian Studies Series, vol. 273. Athens, Ohio: Cistercian Publications; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2018. xv, 160 pp. Paper $29.95. [Translations of Formula honestae vitae, Instructio sacerdotalis, and Tractatus de statu virtutum humilitatis, obedientiae, tomoris, et charitatis.]Bernard, of Clairvaux. Various Sermons. Translated by Grace Remington, OCSO. Introduction by Alice Chapman. Cistercian Fathers Series, vol. 84. Athens, Ohio: Cistercian Publications; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2020. xlix, 99 pp. Paperback $24.95. [Ten sermons on feast days.]Black, Joseph L., ed. The Martin Marprelate Press: A Documentary History. Publications of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Tudor and Stuart Texts, vol. 5. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2020. 170 pp. Paper $21.95. [Collection of twenty edited documents, mainly from manuscript and archival sources, connected with the underground press that produced the anti-episcopal Martin Marprelate tracts (1588–89).]Böckerman, Robin Wahlsten, ed. and trans. The Bavarian Commentary and Ovid: Clm 4610, the Earliest Documented Commentary on the “Metamorphoses.” Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020. 386 pp., 4 color illus. Gbp 33.95, paper Gbp 23.95. [First critical edition of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 4610, which dates to ca. 1100 and is the earliest systematic study of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Latin text with facing-page English translation.]Bokenham, Osbern. Lives of Saints, vol. 1. Edited by Simon Horobin. Early English Text Society, o.s., vol. 356. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 2020. xi, 417 pp., 1 plate. $85.00. [Bokenham's translation of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea, complemented by lives of various British saints, is the first edition of a major work by the fifteenth-century English poet and translator. Vol. 1 of the projected three-volume edition contains the introduction and 65 of the 180 lives.]Caxton, William. Caxton's “Golden Legend,” Volume 1: Temporale. Edited by Mayumi Taguchi, John Scahill, and Satoko Tokunaga. Early English Text Society, o.s., vol. 355. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 2020. lxxxviii, 236 pp., 4 illus. $85.00. [First scholarly edition of Caxton's English translation of the Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea printed in 1483–84.]Cudworth, Ralph. Origenes Cantabrigiensis: Ralph Cudworth, “Predigt vor dem Unterhaus” un adnere Schriften. Edited and translated by Alfons Fürst and Christian Hengstermann. Adamantiana, vol. 11. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2018. 311 pp. eur 54.00. [Editions of the letters, poems, and sermons by the Anglican clergyman and theologian, Ralph Cudworth, accompanied by six articles on his writings. English and Latin texts with facing-page German translations.]Da Vinci, Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester: A New Edition. Edited and translated by Domenico Laurenza and Martin Kemp. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Vol. 1 (83 pp.) contains a facsimile reproduction of the codex; vol. 2 (xv, 242 pp., 74 figs.) presents the history of the codex with interpretive essays; vol. 3 (x, 322 pp.) presents a transcription and English translation; vol. 4 (310 pp.) presents a modern English paraphrase and page-by-page commentary on the text. $390.00. [The four-volume edition of Leonardo's scientific notebook (36 folios) offers the first serious reconstruction of his legacy as a scientist.]Daniel, Henry. Liber Uricrisiarum: A Reading Edition. Edited by E. Ruth Harvey, M. Teresa Tavormina, and Sarah Star, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. xix, 511 pp., 1 illus. $100.00. [Edition of the earliest known work of academic medicine written in Middle English (1370s).]Erasmus, Desiderius. Erasmus on the New Testament: Selections from the “Paraphrases,” the “Annotations,” and the Writings on Biblical Interpretation. Edited and translated by Robert D. Sider. Erasmus Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. xvi, 331 pp. $94.00, paper $47.95. [Translation of selections from Erasmus's voluminous writings on the New Testament.]Gallucci, Giovanni Paolo. Gallucci's Commentary on Dürer's “Four Books on Human Proportion”: Renaissance Proportion Theory. Translated and edited by James Hutson. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020. xiii, 208 pp., 18 figs. Gbp 37.95, paper Gbp 22.95. [The first English translation of Gallucci's Della simmetria dei corpi humani, an Italian translation of Dürer's treatise.]Gerhard Zerbolt, von Zutphen. Was dürfen Laien lesen? De libris teutonicalibus / Een verclaringhe vanden duytshcen boeken. Edited by Nikolaus Staubach and Rudolf Suntrup. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2019. 214 pp., 1 fig. eur 48.00. [Latin text of a tract by the learned priest and librarian in the house of the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer, which defended the right of laypeople to read the Bible in the vernacular, followed by a contemporary Dutch translation from the author's circle.]Gottfried, von Strassburg. “Tristan and Isolde” with Ulrich von Türheim's “Continuation.” Translated and edited by William T. Whobrey. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2020. xxxiii, 321 pp. $49.00, paper $18.00. [English prose translation of Gottfried's Middle High German verse romance and Ulrich's Continuation.]Guillaume, de Machaut. The Complete Poetry and Music, Volume 2: The Boethian Poems; “Le Remede de Fortune,” “Le Confort d'Ami.” Edited and translated by R. Barton Palmer. Music edited by Uri Smilansky. Art historical commentary by Domenic Leo. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS in association with the University of Rochester, 2019. ix, 607 pp., 39 figs., 16 musical examples. Paper $39.95. [Old French verse texts with facing-page English verse translations, with accompanying music and art program of the base manuscript.]Hexter, Ralph, Laura Pfundter, and Justin Haynes, eds. and trans. Appendix Ovidiana: Latin Poems Ascribed to Ovid in the Middle Ages. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, vol. 62. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020. xxxiv, 510 pp. $35.00. [The first comprehensive collection of Latin “medieval Ovid” verse texts with facing-page English prose translations.]John, of Garland. John of Garland's “De triumphis Ecclesie”: A New Critical Edition with Introduction and Translation. Edited and translated by Martin Hall. Studia Artistarum, vol. 44. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2019. 417 pp., 10 color illus. $111.00. [Latin verse text with facing-page English prose translation.]Jones, Catherine M., William W. Kibler, and Logan E. Whalen, trans. An Old French Trilogy: Texts from the William of Orange Cycle. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020. ix, 214 pp., 1 map, 1 genealogy. $85.00. [Modern English verse translations of The Coronation of Louis, The Convoy to Nîmes, and The Conquest of Orange.]Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. The Jack Cade Rebellion of 1450: A Sourcebook. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2020. xii, 257 pp. $95.00. [Thirty-two medieval and early modern primary source documents on the Jack Cade rebellion.]Kramer, Johanna, Hugh Magennis, and Robin Norris, eds. and trans. Anonymous Old English Lives of Saints. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, vol. 63. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020. xxxix, 764 pp. $35.00. [Twenty-two unattributed Anglo-Saxon prose texts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries with facing-page English translations.]Laurence, of Březová. Origins of the Hussite Uprising: The Chronicle of Laurence of Březová (1414–1421). Translated and edited by Thomas A. Fudge. Routledge Medieval Translations. London: Routledge, 2020. xiv, 284 pp., 4 figs., 3 maps. $160.00. [First English-language translation of the most important source on the early Hussite movement, De gestis et variis accidentibus regni Bohemiae.]Luft, Diana, ed. and trans. Medieval Welsh Medical Texts, Volume 1: The Recipes. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020. xii, 611 pp. Paper $60.00. [First critical edition of the corpus of late medieval Welsh medical recipes traditionally ascribed to the Physicians of Myddfai. Welsh texts with facing-page English translations.]Lydgate, John. John Lydgate's “Dance of Death” and Related Works. Edited by Megan L. Cook and Elzaveta Strakhov. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS in association with the University of Rochester, 2019. vii, 195 pp. Paper $19.95. [Includes both versions of Lydgate's Dance of Death, his French source, the Danse macabre (with English translation), and related Middle English verse.]Melick, Elizabeth, Susanna Fein, and David Raybin, eds. The Roland and Otuel Romances and the Anglo-French “Otinel.” TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for the Rossell Hope Robbins Research Library, in collaboration with the University of Rochester Department of English and the Teaching Association for Medieval Studies, 2019. viii, 377 pp. Paper $24.95.Metochites, Theodoros. On Morals or Concerning Education [Ēthikos ē Peri paideias]. Translated and edited by Sophia Xenophontos. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, vol. 61. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020. xxvi, 285 pp. $35.00. [Byzantine Greek text with facing-page English translation.]Meyer, Johannes. Women's History in the Age of Reformation: Johannes Meyer's “Chronicle of the Dominican Observance” [Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens]. Translated and edited by Claire Taylor Jones. Saint Michael's College Mediaeval Translations. Medieval Sources in Translation, vol. 58. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2019. vi, 306 pp., 2 maps. Paper $35.00.Miles, Joanna, ed. The Devil's Mortal Weapons: An Anthology of Late Medieval and Protestant Vernacular Theology and Popular Culture. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018. xvi, 400 pp. Paperback $35.00. [Original transcriptions of source selections organized around the topics of soul, emotion, spiritual health, body, mind, and physical health.]Moreau-Guibert, Kerine, ed. Pore Caitif: A Middle English Manual of Religion and Devotion. Textes Vernaculaires du Moyen Age, vol. 24. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2019. 293 pp. Paper $111.00.Peter, the Venerable. Les écrits anti-sarrasins de Pierre le Vénérable: Cultures de combat et combat de cultures; “Summa totius haeresis Sarracenorum,” “Epistola de translatione sua,” “Contra sectam sive haeresim Sarracenorum.” Edited and translated by Alain Galonnier. Preface by Dominique Iogna-Prat. Philosophes Médiévaux, vol. 67. Leuven, Belg.: Peeters for Éditions de l'Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2020. vii, 386 pp. Paperback $128.00. [Latin texts followed by French translations.]Robins, William, ed. Historia Apollonii regis Tyri: A Fourteenth-Century Version of a Late Antique Romance. Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, vol. 36. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies for the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2019. xi, 123 pp. Paperback $17.95. [Edited from Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vaticanus latinus 1961.]Rypon, Robert. Selected Sermons, Volume 1: Feast Days and Saints’ Days. Edited and translated by Holly Johnson. Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, vol. 24.1. Leuven, Belg.: Peeters, 2019. 375 pp. Paper $84.00. [Latin texts with facing-page English translations.]Schieberle, Misty, ed. Christine de Pizan's Advice for Princes in Middle English Translation: Stephen Scrope's “The Epistle of Othea” and the Anonymous “Litel Bibell of Knyghthod.” TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for the Rossell Hope Robbins Research Library, in collaboration with the University of Rochester Department of English and the Teaching Association for Medieval Studies, 2020. viii, 491 pp. $99.00, paper $39.95.Short, Ian, trans. and ed. Three Anglo-Norman Kings: “The Lives of William the Conqueror and Sons” by Benoît de Sainte-Maure [Histoire des ducs de Normandie]. Mediaeval Sources in Translation, vol. 57. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018. viii, 228 pp. Paperback $25.00. [Prose translation of the last quarter of Benoît's epic verse chronicle.]Solopova, Elizabeth, Jeremy Catto, and Anne Hudson, eds. From the Vulgate to the Vernacular: Four Debates on an English Question c. 1400. British Writers of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, vol. 7. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies; Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2020. cxliv, 216 pp., 8 plates. $150.00. [Four texts on the legitimacy, for and against, of using the vernacular language for scriptural citation, including Latin works by the Franciscan William Butler, the Dominican Thomas Palmer, and the secular priest Richard Ullerston (edited for the first time), and an English Wycliffite adaptation of Ullerston's Latin. The Latin texts include facing-page English translations.]Bourne, Claire M. L. Typographies of Performance in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xviii, 328 pp., 73 illus. $90.00. [Considers how the theatricality of early modern English drama is conveyed creatively through printed playbook typography and page design.]Bousmanne, Bernard, and Elena Savini, eds. The Library of the Dukes of Burgundy. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2020. 205 pp., 165 color plates. eur 75.00. [Anthology of articles with a catalogue of the library's collection of 280 surviving manuscripts housed in the Royal Library of Belgium.]Calhoun, Joshua. The Nature of the Page: Poetry, Papermaking, and the Ecology of Texts in Renaissance England. Material Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. xii, 212 pp., 30 illus. $55.00.Chenoweth, Katie. The Prosthetic Tongue: Printing Technology and the Rise of the French Language. Material Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. 350 pp. $69.95.Connolly, Margaret, and Raluca Radulescu, eds. Editing and Interpretation of Middle English Texts: Essays in Honour of William Marx. Texts and Transitions, vol. 12. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2018. xix, 351 pp., 30 black-and-white and 2 color illus., 6 tables. eur 95.00. [Essays treating various types of manuscript evidence in relation to editing as an act of textual interpretation.]Fox, Adam. The Press and the People: Cheap Print and Society in Scotland, 1500–1785. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. ix, 449 pp., 60 illus. $100.00.Hirschler, Konrad. A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture: The Library of Ibn ’Abd Al-Hādī. Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2020. x, 612 pp., 20 black-and-white and 79 color illus. Gbp 85.00. [On the largest private book collection from the pre-Ottoman Arabic Middle East for which the corpus of manuscripts and a documentary paper trail survives.]Kwakkel, Erik, ed. Vernacular Manuscript Culture, 1000–1500. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Book Culture. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2018. 278 pp., 23 figs., 22 plates. eur 40.50.Rouse, Richard H., and Mary A. Rouse. Renaissance Illuminators in Paris: Artists and Artisans, 1500–1715. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019. 280 pp., 56 color and black-and-white plates. eur 125.00. [Study of the commercial manuscript book trade in Paris, including a biographical register of more than five hundred named illuminators.]Rudy, Kathryn M. Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019. xvi, 356 pp., 137 color illus. Gbp 59.95, paper Gbp 22.95.Sawyer, Daniel. Reading English Verse in Manuscript, c. 1350–c. 1500. Oxford English Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xiii, 208 pp., 9 figs. $80.00. [Investigates how the reading of poetry happened in the material context of and Text A History. Text University Press, 2020. xii, pp., black-and-white and color plates. Paper and Jeremy Catto, eds. Books and in Early Modern Essays to James in Mediaeval Studies, vol. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018. 449 pp., 10 figs. Les des de vol. et de de 2 vols. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2019. pp., 1 color plate. eur survey of of books and by that are in the or in for from to and Theology of the Old Toronto Old and Series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, xix, pp., 2 6 illus. “The of The of Saints’ on the of the Studies in the History of Medieval vol. Press, 2018. pp., illus. in Late Medieval New Books, 2020. pp., illus. and eds. and in the Late Middle Ages. 2019. pp., 30 color illus. eur in Medieval and Early Modern From to Oxford Studies in Medieval and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xv, pp., 9 illus. and David eds. A History of an Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. pp. and eds. Late Medieval in England. Medieval Studies, vol. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. xii, pp., 3 color illus. eur Middle English in Late Medieval England. Religion and in the Middle Ages. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019. xvi, pp., 2 tables. Gbp Mary The and in Medieval University Press, 2019. viii, pp., 9 illus. [On the of and in the of and and eds. des vol. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2019. vi, pp. eur and eds. Cultures of in Early Modern Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. vii, pp., color plates. The and in England. University Press, 2019. xviii, pp., illus. [On how of the of of of Poems in of the University of Press, 2020. xi, pp., color 1 The of the in Early Modern Toronto vol. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. xii, pp., illus. and Religion in Late Medieval Royal Society Studies in New Series. Press for the Royal Society, xiii, pp., 1 map, 20 illus. Paper and and in the Late Medieval Studies in the and Its Medieval Studies, vol. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. x, pp., 9 figs., 6 color tables. eur James M., and eds. Sources of the Christian A History of Christian Mich.: 2018. pp. and eds. and in Late Medieval and Early Modern and in the Middle vol. 1. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. 306 pp., color illus., 6 tables. eur Reformation of New University Press, 2019. pp. paper der vols. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2019. pp. Paper eur Early Modern and in the English Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. 236 pp. or Latin to the in the Studies and Texts, vol. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2019. xv, pp. The of The History and of the Translated from the Italian by M. and R. A. University Press, 2019. pp., 10 illus. D. L. The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch in the Leiden: Leiden University Press, in association with the New 2019. viii, pp. eur The Age of An and History of Late Medieval and Reformation by and New University Press, 2020. pp., illus. Thomas W. and in the Medieval c. 1500. vol. 24. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. pp., 10 illus., 2 tables. eur The of the Medieval Middle Society, and University Press, 2018. xiv, pp., 2 maps. $39.95. [On the of Christian of and and the of and eds. and in Early Modern London: Routledge, 2019. ix, pp., figs. paper Protestant in Routledge Research in Early Modern History. New Routledge, 2020. ix, pp., 1 John Robert. and the of the Renaissance London: Books, 2020. pp., color and 39 black-and-white illus. Gbp [On the of by the around in the of and of Rudolf in The Medieval of and the Rise of the University Press, 2019. xv, pp., 6 illus. to and in Medieval The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. x, pp., 20 illus. and the Early Modern English by A. Chapman. London: Routledge, 322 pp., color 73 black-and-white figs., 2 Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Culture. Anglo-Saxon Studies. D. 2020. pp. ed. and at the of New of 2019. pp., color plates. of an at the of Art in in the Texts, and at vol. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. pp., color 6 tables. Paper eur 85.00. [Study of as in the evidence of the of in and in Early Modern University of Press, 2020. xi, 356 pp., figs. and in the of Late Medieval England. Studies in and Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. viii, pp., 4 figs. M. The of and the des University of Press, 2020. xv, pp. T. and the of in Late Renaissance Studies in Italian Renaissance History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019. xi, pp., 9 figs. John and eds. and in From the Medieval to the New to Religion and Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019. xiv, pp., 6 figs. Paper $60.00. [On the of by for physical and spiritual A. and in the Middle the and University Press, 2020. 236 pp. eur [On the textual of for and the of as and Nature in the Royal Society of University of Press, 2020. pp., illus. Ecology and in Old and the of in University of Press, 2019. x, pp. Nature and Art in the Dutch University Press, 2019. xi, pp., color illus. on the Four manuscripts of a learned and to the study of the of the Dutch and on how and his with natural as a to on their of and a color facsimile of the D. in the of Early Medieval England. Anglo-Saxon Studies. Press, 2018. pp., illus. Paper The in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of and Cambridge: D. 2019. viii, pp. and Richard eds. for in by in vol. New Books, 2020. pp., 16 illus. and eds. in the Modern Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. xv, pp., color illus. E. Nature in Early New England. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. pp., 8 illus. Adam. of a and 2020. xiii, pp., 16 color black-and-white figs. Gbp [On the of the of a for at and with Joseph of and the of to John. in the New University Press, 2019. pp., figs. paper [On the of from the as through works in relation to ed. Reading the in the Middle Ages and the of the and Studies in the Middle Ages and the vol. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. pp., black-and-white and 9 color illus. eur The of Anglo-Saxon c. Oxford: Books, 2020. vi, pp., figs., and color Paper and eds. the in c. Oxford: Press, 2019. xii, 236 pp., figs., color plates. Paper Gbp and Early Medieval of in Late and the Early Middle Ages. University Press, 2019. xi, pp., black-and-white and color illus. Paper E. the and to Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. vii, pp., illus. [On early modern in and the relation that this have for and the of Nature in Renaissance Series, vol. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019. pp., color plates. Paper A History of in Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. x, pp., color plates. and eds. Medieval and Early Modern A to Robin Medieval and Renaissance and Press, 2019. 311 pp., 30 color and black-and-white illus. Elizabeth, and eds. and in Early Modern Publications of the German Studies vol. New Books, 2019. x, pp., figs., 6 tables. in the Middle Ages. 2018. pp., color plates. Paper A History. London: Books, 2018. pp., color and black-and-white illus. for and in the Early Modern English Material Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. xii, pp., figs. Paper The for the in the Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2020. pp., color illus.

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsRichard Yeo. Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Pp. xviii+398. $48.00 (cloth).Rose-Mary SargentRose-Mary SargentMerrimack College Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe Baconian project of the early members of the Hartlib Circle and the Royal Society of London required accurate methods for compiling vast amounts of information. As Richard Yeo notes, part of this compilation included information taken from books, letters, and diaries, which had a direct relation to the Renaissance humanist tradition of note taking. In addition, however, methods were also required for the recording of direct observations and experimental trials. On this last point, Yeo claims that in addition to disciplines such as law and medicine, “note taking” should be considered as another tradition that had influence on modern science (3–5). The nature of this influence, however, is not clear. That there were traditions of note taking on which natural philosophers could draw does not in itself mark a contribution to the scientific or methodological content of their work.It is useful for those studying the rise of early modern experimental philosophy to remember the central importance of note taking. Yeo provides great detail on the various kinds of notebooks that had been developed during the Renaissance. For early modern science the kinds most used were the commonplace book that placed material under heads and the journal or diary that kept a chronological record. Yeo describes this as the “notebook culture,” yet the constancy that one would expect of a culture does not seem to be present. Indeed, as he also notes, the methods of note taking underwent appreciable changes to accommodate the type of information and the uses to which the notes would be put: “the accumulation and analysis of empirical information required significant adjustments. There is a profound difference between using notes to select examples for an agreed corpus of quotations and tropes, and using notes to generalize by working inductively from disconnected, miscellaneous particulars” (35).Chapter 2 begins with general discussions about memory and how note taking served as an aid to memory, which leads into Bacon’s call for the use of heads for inquiries concerning natural processes so as to categorize observations and experiments. This is followed by a look at the note-taking practices of John Aubrey, Abraham Hill, and Thomas Hobbes (47–55). Chapter 3 has more focus on experimental philosophers, such as Robert Boyle, and how they had to compile their own observations of the natural world, sometimes with the use of a traveling tablet book modeled on the waste books of merchants, in addition to having to process these data with material gathered from the diaries, journals, and the letters of others. Bacon’s call for “particulars” to be gathered from nature and made “literate” is discussed as part of the “empirical sensibility,” by which Yeo means the “gathering of information from a wide range of sources, and the comparison and corroboration of this with extant knowledge” (84–87). The Royal Society, through the auspices of Henry Oldenburg and Boyle, encouraged communication about observations and experiments together with details about the way in which these were made so as to make the records useful for others and for future generations. Yeo claims that the “directness of the hints indicates a lack of consensus about these points” (89).Chapter 4 includes a discussion of how the public-spiritedness and religious beliefs of the members of Hartlib’s circle influenced their compilations designed to further the common good. Samuel Hartlib himself used a number of methods for note taking and examined many others, including Harrisonian indexes, which was not a particularly helpful method for his purposes but did introduce the idea of recording observations on loose slips of paper. In chapter 5, the note-taking practices of Robert Boyle and John Beale are compared. Beale emphasized the need for ordering data systematically, which reinforced Boyle’s cautious attitude toward premature systems. In his History of Air, for example, Boyle noted that doctrines or theories could aid the memory when collecting information, but “this was not a voucher for truth” (134–35).Boyle’s practice of keeping records of his observations and experiments on loose sheets is covered in chapter 6. As Yeo notes, Boyle “did not maintain large commonplace books of the kind recommended by Renaissance humanists” (152). Boyle was mostly concerned with making immediate notes of experiments performed to record the facts surrounding them, believing that loose notes without method were most useful for himself and others, although he did record experiments in small notebooks as well. In contrast, John Locke’s efforts to produce a more systematic approach are discussed in chapter 7. Locke’s “New Method” compiled observations chronologically with marginal heads that served as keywords for an index. The method had problems with retrieval, however, and was not practical when making many observations. While traveling, for example, Locke himself chose to keep journals instead.Robert Hooke, on the other hand, agreed with Boyle about the usefulness of loose notes. In chapter 8, Yeo explores Hooke’s dynamic archive, which included the collection, organization, and storage of notes and published compilations of these by the Royal Society. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, edited by Oldenburg, published guides for note taking, such as Boyle’s General Heads for a Natural History. Hooke’s “General Scheme” was designed to create a repository of like observations and experiments. Drawing on the practices of Bacon’s Solomon’s House, Hooke described the process of arranging, collating, comparing, and drawing inferences from the data compiled in this repository. Hooke as well stressed the need for many people over many ages to compile adequate information.In chapter 9, Yeo summarizes the general evolution of note taking from Hartlib to the Royal Society that resulted in a commitment to compiling observations and experiments for a collaborative effort. Despite an emphasis on the humanist tradition of note taking, Yeo concludes that members of the Royal Society “accepted Bacon’s call for the accumulation of ‘particulars’: that is, elementary data on topics such as those named in his list of 130 natural histories. This was a different task from” that of the humanist tradition, which involved “the reduction and abbreviation of knowledge already collated to some extent under topics, maxims, sententiae, or doctrines” (259). Yeo’s is an interesting account about the challenges facing the virtuoso in compiling information for a collaborative project. They clearly built on the Renaissance humanist tradition, but it is not clear how that tradition made any significant contribution to the methodology and philosophy of science of those involved in this project. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by HOPOS Volume 7, Number 1Spring 2017 Sponsored by The International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/691123HistoryPublished online February 21, 2017 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

In the early professional history of the history of science, an idealist perspective regarding the Scientific Revolution, most masterfully developed by Alexandre Koyre, held sway. However, in the 1940s, a group of Marxist-oriented European scholars proposed an alternate view whereby the motive force for scientific innovation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was located in the interaction between artisans and scholars. The most prominent of these Europeans was the Austrian emigre Edgar Zilsel. Although the hegemony of the idealist historical perspective has long since been challenged, no coherent alternative narrative reflecting the Zilsel perspective has emerged.While not attempting anything so ambitious, this fascinating book (Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pp. vii+359. $45) utilizes the development of pyrotechny in the early modern period as a case that affirms the Zilsel thesis that crafts made a significant contribution to the creation of a “new science” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (p. 236). Moreover, Simon Werrett carries his narrative of the interaction of the pyrotechnic craftsmen and natural philosophers (and the impact of pyro-

Any study of the ‘Scientific Revolution’ and particularly Descartes’ role in the debates surrounding the conception of nature (atoms and the void v. plenum theory, the role of mathematics and experiment in natural knowledge, the status and derivation of the laws of nature, the eternality and necessity of eternal truths, etc.) should be placed in the philosophical, scientific, theological, and sociological context of its time. Seventeenthcentury debates concerning the nature of the eternal truths such as ‘2 + 2 = 4’ or the law of inertia turn on the question of whether these truths were created along with nature, or were uncreated and subsisting in God’s mind. One’s answer to that question has direct consequences for conceptions of the necessity ⁄ contingency of mathematical and natural knowledge, how knowledge of such truths is accomplished by humans, and what grounds these truths. In this paper, I review the positions of four successors to Descartes’ philosophy on the question of the eternal truths to illustrate how in specific ways that question with its theological, metaphysical, modal, and epistemological dimensions concerned the objectivity and certainty of the discoveries of the new science.

If we wanted to find out what it might have felt like to have lived at a certain time and place, then according to one popular way of understanding their value, autobiography and biography would be...

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Politics, Print Culture and the Habermas Thesis Cluster

Notes on Contributors

Between Carnival and Lent: The Scientific Revolution at the Margins of Culture Paula Findlen (bio) How curious, after all, is the way in which we moderns think about the world! And it is all so novel, too. E. A. Burtt In the half-century since the “Scientific Revolution” became a meaningful description of the transformation of attitudes toward nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it seems to have enjoyed more lives than the Cheshire cat and to have remained as enigmatic. 1 Since its original formulation in the late 1940s, it has been the topic of a lively debate about the origins and character of modern approaches to nature and, more generally, knowledge. The result has been not only increased skepticism that the Scientific Revolution could be reduced to any single narrative, but also a profusion [End Page 243] of narratives about what constituted its fundamental characteristics. As Hayden White observes, “any given set of real events can be emplotted in a number of ways, can bear the weight of being told as any number of different stories.” 2 In the process, the Scientific Revolution, perhaps more than any other area of science studies, has become a testing ground for new approaches to the historical understanding of science and new ways of understanding the process of scientific change. Why should we feel so compelled to tell and retell this particular story in the history of science, when there are so many other episodes worthy of our attention? Surely part of the fascination lies in the sense that the Scientific Revolution is, in many respects, the original story in the history of science. From the sixteenth century onward, humanist natural philosophers—from the anatomist Andreas Vesalius to the astronomer Johannes Kepler—wrote the histories of various sciences in order to publicize the importance of their reformation of knowledge. By the eighteenth century they had become the story, protagonists of a narrative rewritten by new scholarly communities in search of modern ruptures with the past. 3 The crafting of scientific narrative has been a prolonged and self-conscious exercise in which scientists as well as historians have participated over the centuries—all the more so because neither the scientist nor the historian enjoyed distinct intellectual identities until fairly recently (quite often, as the case of the seventeenth-century statesman, historian, and natural philosopher Francis Bacon demonstrates well, they were the same person). Accordingly, we might see the Scientific Revolution as one of the fundamental experiments in narrating the history of science. While the grand narrative of the Scientific Revolution has largely been a story of the rise of modern science that takes science in a fairly defined sense as its focal point, cultural approaches to the history of science suggest a variety of other possibilities that explore in greater detail the imagery that early modern Europeans had at their disposal when they attempted to describe nature. Such imagery was [End Page 244] not simply an afterthought to the study of nature; often it was so deeply embedded in the act of seeing and understanding nature that it would be impossible to separate how a particular natural philosopher viewed nature from how he viewed culture. 4 Defining nature and defining culture were complementary activities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If we wish to truly understand what it meant to do early modern science, then we need to think more carefully about what it meant to be early modern. The approach I am suggesting has already had a number of advocates. Several years ago, John Schuster remarked that “the Scientific Revolution consisted of a process of change and displacement among and within competing systems of natural philosophy,” and he recommended that historians look more carefully at the “privileged images, metaphors or models” that defined these different approaches to knowledge. 5 The literature exploring the fundamental cultural themes of the early modern period can be a rich resource for expanding our interpretations of the Scientific Revolution. 6 Since nature was never an isolated subject of study during this period but always part of some larger project, we should examine more closely those features of early modern society that best illuminate the place of...

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