Experimental Practices and Philosophical Traditions: Organizing and Disseminating Knowledge in Early Modern Europe INTRODUCTION Doina-Cristina RUSU In an era characterized by the recovery of ancient wisdom and by geographical discoveries, the body of knowledge as understood by the scholastics was too narrow to encompass this emerging new world. This big amount of information, gathered either […]
Category: Vol. 8 no. 2
Vol. 8 no. 2
Ruscelli’s Book of Secrets in Context: A Sixteenth-Century Venetian ‘Museum in Motion’
Ruscelli’s Book of Secrets in Context: A Sixteenth-Century Venetian ‘Museum in Motion’ Stefano GULIZIA Abstract. This essay discusses the emergence of empirical practices both in houses of craft and medicinal laboratories in Venice during the 1550s, a period in which, with the fortunate collection of the Secrets of Alexis anonymously published by the relentless polymath […]
Abolishing the Borders between Natural History and Natural Magic Francis Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum and The Historia vitae et mortis
Abolishing the Borders between Natural History and Natural Magic Francis Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum and The Historia vitae et mortis Doina-Cristina RUSU Abstract. In this paper I investigate Francis Bacon’s natural histories, with a focus on the Latin Historia vitae et mortis and the posthumous Sylva sylvarum. My claim is that the English Philosopher was not […]
Between Natural History and Experimental Method. Descartes and Botany
Between Natural History and Experimental Method. Descartes and Botany Fabrizio BALDASSARRI Abstract. Botanical studies were slow to be influenced by experimental method, since the learned were immersed in the demanding work of collecting, observing, listing, and describing. The transition to ‘modern science’ was therefore delayed, for natural history prevailed at the expense of experimentation. Although […]
The Persuasive Value of Demonstration: Descartes’ Discourse
The Persuasive Value of Demonstration: Descartes’ Discourse Ovidiu BABEŞ Abstract. The aim of this paper is to give an account of the possible doctrines of demonstration which could have served as a mode of exposition in Descartes’ Discourse and Essays. Assuming that Descartes needed to convince his readers that his method was a genuine procedure […]
Pascal, Spinoza, and Defining Cartesianism
Pascal, Spinoza, and Defining Cartesianism Daniel COLLETTE Abstract. Like Wittgenstein’s family resemblances, defining Cartesianism in the seventeenth century is challenging with no immediately clear necessary and sufficient conditions that draw this diverse school of philosophers together. Many recent commentators have already explored similar and related issues. I would like to expand this discussion by focusing […]
The Principia for the Common-Reader: A New Trend in Newton Scholarship?
The Principia for the Common-Reader: A New Trend in Newton Scholarship? ESSAY REVIEW Dana JALOBEANU In the past 350 years, Isaac Newton’s Principia has defeated many readers. Partly, this was due to its style and structure. The reader finds herself confronted with a baroque superstructure of propositions followed by abridged demonstrations conveyed in an unfamiliar […]
The Correspondence of René Descartes: A Philosophy that Takes too Many Liberties?
The Correspondence of René Descartes: A Philosophy that Takes too Many Liberties? René Descartes, Corespondenţa completă. Vol.I. 1607-1638, ed. Vlad Alexandrescu, trans. Vlad Alexandrescu, Robert Arnăutu, Robert Lazu, Călin Cristian Pop, Mihai-Dragoş Vădana, Grigore Vida (Iaşi: Polirom, 2014), ISBN- 978-973-46-4245-8, 858 pp. Oana ŞERBAN Considered an intimate instrument of expressing ideas and arguing different theoretical […]
Notebooks and Baconianism in Early Modern England
Notebooks and Baconianism in Early Modern England Richard Yeo, Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science (University of Chicago Press: Chicago & London, 2014), ISBN 9780226106564 and 6731 (e-book), 384 pp. Claudia DUMITRU This book is an examination of the practice of note-taking in the scientific circles of seventeenth-century England, with a focus on the […]