Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe

by Edited by J. V. Field , Frank A. J. L. James , Afterword by A. Rupert Hall

• ISBN13: 9780521627542
• ISBN10: 0521627540
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-10-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Renaissance and Revolution is a collection of fifteen essays which opens up alternative perspectives on some of the problems seen to be associated with the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The topics treated include the dissemination of Greek science, medical empiricism, natural history, the relations of scholars and craftsmen in various walks of life from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the so-called ‘mechanical philosophy’ in France and England, the work of Isaac Newton, and the difficulties encountered by proponents of Newtonianism in Italy in the early eighteenth century. Figures discussed include Leonardo Fioravanti, Jan Swammerdam, Piero Della Francesca, Johannes Hevelius, Jonas Moore, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens, Francesco Algarotti, and Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli. There is an introduction by the editors and an afterword by A. Rupert Hall.

Table of Contents

Frontispiece	iv	(5)
Preface	ix	(2)
List of illustrations	xi	(1)
Notes on contributors	xii	(4)
Abbreviations	xvi
Introduction	1	(14)
J. V. FIELD
FRANK A. J. L. JAMES
1 Greek science in the sixteenth-century Renaissance	15	(14)
VIVIAN NUTTON
2 `With the rules of life and an enema': Leonardo Fioravanti's medical primitivism	29	(16)
WILLIAM EAMON
3 The cutting edge of a revolution? Medicine and natural history near the shores of the North Sea	45	(18)
HAROLD J. COOK
4 Science and technology during the Scientific Revolution: an empirical approach	63	(10)
RICHARD S. WESTFALL
5 Mathematics and the craft of painting: Piero della Francesca and perspective	73	(24)
J. V. FIELD
6 Johannes Hevelius and the visual language of astronomy	97	(20)
MARY G. WINKLER
ALBERT VAN HELDEN
7 Mathematical sciences and military technology: the Ordnance Office in the reign of Charles II	117	(16)
FRANCES WILLMOTH
8 Between ars and philosophia naturalis: reflections on the historiography of early modern mechanics	133	(14)
ALAN GABBEY
9 The conscience of Robert Boyle: functionalism, `dysfunctionalism' and the task of historical understanding	147	(14)
MICHAEL HUNTER
10 Clandestine Stoic concepts in mechanical philosophy: the problem of electrical attraction	161	(12)
GAD FREUDENTHAL
11 Alchemy in the Newtonian circle: personal acquaintances and the problem of the late phase of Isaac Newton's alchemy	173	(20)
KARIN FIGALA
ULRICH PETZOLD
12 Newton's subtle matter: the Opticks queries and the mechanical philosophy	193	(10)
R. W. HOME
13 Huygens's reaction to Newton's gravitational theory	203	(12)
ROBERTO DE A. MARTINS
14 The reception of Newton's Opticks in Italy	215	(14)
PAOLO CASINI
15 Marsigli, Benedict XIV and the Bolognese Institute of Sciences	229	(10)
GIORGIO DRAGONI
Afterword Retrospection on the Scientific Revolution	239	(12)
A. RUPERT HALL
Bibliography	251	(22)
Index	273