Renaissance meteorology and modern science

Abstract

‘‘Meteorology’’ in the medieval and early modern period was a field concerned with the topics of Aristotle’s Meteorologica: the imperfect mixtures risen in the lower atmosphere from the two exhalations (books I to III), together with the perfect mixtures, such as minerals (book IV). Owing to this Aristotelian inheritance, meteorology came to be inscribed as part of the teaching course of natural philosophy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century (physica, philosophia, or physiologia). Before approaching these topics, the student would have gone through the principles of change from Aristotle’s Physics and On Generation and Corruption and the study of simple perfect bodies from On the Heavens. By the late sixteenth century, some authors come to think of meteorology as ‘‘the beginning of physics,’’ meaning by that the beginning of ‘‘applied’’ natural science (physica specialis): the study of sublunary mixed bodies. After the treatise on mixture from meteorology, the student would continue with the perfect mixtures from Aristotle’s biological works, including On the Soul, and some of the parva naturalia. Renaissance Meteorology is a pioneering work aiming to fill a gap in the scholarship on the natural philosophy of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by studying this material. There is shockingly little literature that the author could have taken into account and nothing that comes close to a satisfying overview in English. That being said, the book’s thesis is bolder: not only to exhume meteorology as an antiquarian curiosity, but also to argue for its effective influence on the development of early modern science. This makes for a provocative piece of scholarship. This thesis directs the author’s choice of figures and interests in reading them. Apart from Descartes and an incursion in Lutheranism, Renaissance Meteorology is mainly concerned with Italian scientists, arguably the territory releasing more innovation in the period. After the introductory chapter where the author pleads his