Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe

by Anthony Grafton (Editor), Nancy G. Siraisi (Editor)

This volume examines the transformation in ways of studying nature that took place in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of the essays trace particular textual traditions, while others follow the development of scholarly and professional communities. Some concentrate on the internal analysis of primary sources, while others examine the spread of practices to larger groups. Central to all is the search for a context for the increased fascination with nature, and especially with natural particulars--the details of natural forms, plants, and animals--that characterized this period. The essays also discuss how older theories and methods continued to exist; how the renewed study of classical sources introduced new problems and theories into the study of nature; how the structure of disciplines, both old and new, shaped approaches to the natural world; and how the material and practical means of disseminating knowledge helped to shape its content. Recently the history of science in early modern Europe has been both invigorated and obscured by divisions between scholars of different schools. One school tends to claim that rigorous textual analysis provides the key to the development of science, whereas others tend to focus on the social and cultural contexts within which disciplines grew. This volume challenges such divisions, suggesting that multiple historical approaches are both legitimate and mutually complementary.

Contributors
Michael J. B. Allen, Ann Blair, Daniela Mugnai Carrara, Brian P. Copenhaver, Chiara Crisciani, Luc Deitz, Paula Findlen, James Hankins, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, John Monfasani, William Newman, Vivian Nutton, Katharine Park

Genres: History, Renaissance

438 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2000

About the author

Anthony Thomas Grafton is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association. From 2006 to 2020, Grafton was co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of essays that touch on some of the more obscure or more occult aspects of Renaissance science. The editors of the volume, Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, are aiming to bridge the gap between the study of science through the texts of the period and the study of science through the broader social-cultural context. It seems weird that there ever wound up being a gap there, so I think it's a pretty good goal for a collection of essays. Not all of them really wind up looking at their subjects from both the textual and cultural sides, but many of them do.

There's huge variety of topics covered here, but particular attention is given to Neoplatonism & numerology, alchemy, and medicine. Some of the articles are rather dense and inaccessible - particularly those on Pico della Mirandola's work with Cabala and Marsilio Ficino's numerology - but there's all very interesting if you've got the time and patience. There's also an absolutely nuts article about Parcelesus's alchemical ideas bout the "homunculus" a sort of tiny distilled human being with all kinds of eschatological import. It's weird and unsettling but also kind of fascinating.

On the whole, the volume gets tied together by the idea that Renaissance science did not emerge as something entirely new, but instead grew out of the re-appropriation and rediscovery of classical and medieval knowledge and the resulting shifting of traditional disciplinary boundaries and perspectives (the shift of looking at medicine as "scientia" - essentially a branch of philosophy - to an art; the gradual ascent of other philosophies and ideas to challenge the dominance of the Aristotelian system; etc.). It can be a difficult book to get into, wrapped up in relative minutia, and sometimes its chapters do not tie together very clearly, but overall its an interesting read.