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.
Contents
Frontispiece; Preface; List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Abbreviations; Introduction J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James; 1. Greek science in the sixteenth-century Renaissance Vivian Nutton; 2. ‘With the rules of life and an enema’: Leonardo Fioravanti’s medical primitivism William Eamon; 3. The cutting edge of a revolution? Medicine and natural history near the shores of the North Sea Harold J. Cook; 4. Science and technology during the Scientific Revolution: an empirical approach Richard S. Westfall; 5. Mathematics and the craft of painting: Piero della Francesca and perspective J. V. Field; 6. Johannes Hevelius and the visual language of astronomy Mary G. Winkler and Albert van Helden; 7. Mathematical sciences and military technology: the Ordnance Office in the reign of Charles II Frances Willmoth; 8. Between ars and philosophia naturalis: reflections on the historiography of early modern mechanics Alan Gabbey; 9. The conscience of Robert Boyle: functionalism, ‘dysfunctionalism’ and the task of historical understanding Michael Hunter; 10. Clandestine Stoic concepts in mechanical philosophy: the problem of electrical attraction Gad Freudenthal; 11. Alchemy in the Newtonian circle: personal acquaintances and the problem of the late phase of Isaac Newton's alchemy Karin Figala and Ulrich Petzold; 12. Newton’s subtle matter: the Opticks queries and the mechanical philosophy R. W. Home; 13. Huygens’s reaction to Newton’s gravitational theory Roberto de A. Martins; 14. The reception of Newton’s Opticks in Italy Paolo Casini; 15. Marsigli, Benedict XIV and the Bolognese Institute of Sciences Giorgio Dragoni; Afterword: retrospection on the Scientific Revolution A. Rupert Hall; Bibliography; Index.
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