Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Studies on the History of Society and Culture)

Studies on the History of Society and Culture

by Paula Findlen

In 1500 few Europeans regarded nature as a subject worthy of inquiry. Yet fifty years later the first museums of natural history had appeared in Italy, dedicated to the marvels of nature. Italian patricians, their curiosity fueled by new voyages of exploration and the humanist rediscovery of nature, created vast collections as a means of knowing the world and used this knowledge to their greater glory.

Drawing on extensive archives of visitors' books, letters, travel journals, memoirs, and pleas for patronage, Paula Findlen reconstructs the lost social world of Renaissance and Baroque museums. She follows the new study of natural history as it moved out of the universities and into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific societies, religious orders, and princely courts. Findlen argues convincingly that natural history as a discipline blurred the border between the ancients and the moderns, between collecting in order to recover ancient wisdom and the development of new textual and experimental scholarship. Her vivid account reveals how the scientific revolution grew from the constant mediation between the old forms of knowledge and the new.

Genres: History, History Of Science, Italy, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Art, Art History

468 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Paula Findlen (1964- ) is an American academic and historian, whose work focuses on the history of science and medicine, and the history of the Renaissance. She was educated at Wellesley College (BA), and the University of California, Berkeley (MA & PhD). Findlen is Professor of Early Modern Europe and History of Science, Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History, and Co-Director of the Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at Stanford University. Her book, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy was given the Pfizer Award in 1996 by the History of Science Society.

Reviews

[AskHistorians]

This book looks at the development of scientific culture in Europe, using early modern (northern) Italy as a case study. Cultural forces like patronage and identity have large roles in proto-scientific circles.

[Imogen]

This is such a delicious book.

[Stephanie Froebel · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4/5 It lives somewhere in betweeeeeeeen

Possessing Nature is a well-researched account of the origin of natural history museums in Italy. I learned a lot about the origins of natural history museums and hope to learn more about the time in between this book's temporal and spatial contexts and the present day.

Paula Findlen, for the most part, writes well. I can follow her points easily, and her writing somehow encourages me to connect this material to my prior learnings, which many books typically block.

I think my main criticism with the book comes from the frequent jump in the timeline that makes it hard to follow when key turning events took place and to sort out the network of people given the time period. For example, the main two names Findlen discussed are Aldronvandi and Kircher. Their narratives are interwoven so tightly that I did not realize until the last half of the book that Kircher was born 3 years before Aldrovandi died. Yikes! I mean, Findlen does include century marks or dates in her sentences, but when the sentences of two different periods exist in the same paragraphs that jump back and forth, separating these moments can be difficult to navigate.

I would suggest this book for those curious about the making of natural history museums, looking at the social, scientific, and political dimensions that led to their development. Natural history museums are problematic centers of power whose histories are important to bring attention to as we continue to interact with these spaces in the modern age. That being said, this is highly specific and academic so be prepared (though it is more readable than other academic literature so that's a groovy thing!)

[Lette Hass · Rating 3 out of 5]

La práctica del coleccionismo comenzó con un propósito, “poseer”. Este libro aborda dicha cultura durante el siglo XVI y XVII, la manera en que las colecciones fueron transformándose en contenidos, desde lo natural hacia lo artificial. Pero en el medio, quizá lo más relevante es la manera en que explica la cultura de la experimentación. La palabra laboratorio reviene desde diferentes puntos y es significativa:

“The laboratory was therefore a disciplined space, where experimental discursive, and social practices were collectively controlled by competent members. In these respects, the experimental laboratory was a better space in which to generate authentic knowledge than a space outside it in which simple observation of nature could be made.”

[Julaine]

Larger version of article in 'Cultures of Natural History'

[Noran Miss Pumkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

so excited to finally score a copy of this book!!!!