Contrary to conventional accounts, critical knowledge of the cultural differences of Amerindian peoples was not absent in the early Conquest of the Americas. It was indeed a constitutive element of that process. The knowledge, strategies, and institutions of early Conquest relied on, and reproduced, Amerindian difference within the Spanish Empire as an essential element of that empire’s continued claims to legitimate authority. I demonstrate this through a focus on three parallel and sometimes overlapping texts: Ramón Pané’s Indian (...) Antiquities; Peter Martyr d’Anghierra’s First Decade; and the first systematic attempt to govern colonized populations in the Americas, the Laws of Burgos. Not only did each text furnish the necessary material upon which the claims to intellectual, and so civilizational, superiority that were central to the justification of empire could be sustained. What is more, they transformed Amerindian difference from an object of knowledge into a subject of governance. (shrink)

. In his writings, Francis Bacon emphasized the interrelatedness between the migration of people and knowledge, arguing that Europeans of his time had surpassed the greatest civilizations because of their ability to traverse the world freely. Concentrating on Spanish observers who investigated New Spain’s flora, this article bridges theory and practice by examining the Iberian roots of Bacon’s views. The article examines scientific approaches for acquiring bioknowledge by Iberians who specialized in European medicine, including Francisco Hernández, Juan de Cárdenas (...) and Francisco Ximénez. While the article recognizes the contribution of travellers and expatriates to Spain’s bioprospecting project, it also points to the ways in which the limitations of the transfer of botanical information was acknowledged and discusses its meaning. By presenting the complexities in the communication of knowledge, I argue, naturalists in the colonies could highlight their unique vantage point in relation to “armchair” specialists in the metropole. (shrink)

People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial (...) role. Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being. (shrink)

Medieval and Renaissance humanist political discourse and Machiavelli -- Machiavelli and Spanish imperialist discourse in the sixteenth century -- Machiavelli and the foundations of the Spanish reason-of-state tradition : Giovanni Botero and Pedro de Ribadeneyra -- Machiavellian discourse in the Hispanic Baroque reason-of-state tradition -- Juan Pablo Mártir Rizo's rereading of the Prince -- Conclusion.

A Companion to the Spanish Scholastics offers a much-needed survey of the entire field of early modern Spanish scholastic thought. The volume introduces main themes and contexts of scholastics inquiry (theology, philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, law, science and the senses) through close examination of a wide range of texts, debates, methods, and authors, as well as in-depth discussion of the relevant literature. Each chapter includes a useful bibliography and serves as point of departure for future (...) research. The volume not only draws the sum of existing research, but also challenges established notions and breaks new ground. (shrink)

Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature is the first anthology exploring human cognition and literature in the context of early modern Spanish culture. It includes the leading voices in the field, along with the main themes and directions that this important area of study has been producing. The book begins with an overview of the cognitive literary studies research that has been taking place within early modern Spanish studies over the (...) last fifteen years. Next, it traces the creation of self in the context of the novel, focusing on Cervantes's Don Quixote in relation to the notions of embodiment and autopoiesis as well as the faculties of memory and imagination as understood in early modernity. It continues to explore the concept of embodiment, showing its relevance to delve into the mechanics of the interaction between actors and audience both in the jongleuresque and the comedia traditions. It then centers on cognitive theories of perception, the psychology of immersion in fictional worlds, and early modern and modern-day notions of intentionality to discuss the role of perceiving and understanding others in performance, Don Quixote, and courtly conduct manuals. The last section focuses on the affective dimension of audience-performer interactions in the theatrical space of the Spanish corrales and how emotion and empathy can inform new approaches to presenting Las Casas's work in the literature classroom. The volume closes with an afterword offering strategies to design a course on mind and literature in early modernity. (shrink)

We used to think it was the job of a historian of Spanish science to combat the negative evaluations of Hispanic cultures that came to be known as the Black Legend. Paradoxically, attempts to amend dominant narratives of the history of science (such as the Scientific Revolution) so that they might accommodate Spain bolstered the very stories we meant to dismantle. Caring about the Black Legend deformed the history we were trying to write and never convinced the (...) people we hoped to sway. In this article, we provide an overview of the historiographic tendencies that most shaped our careers – responses to the Black Legend, such as contributionist history and bibliometrics – and explain why we have chosen to move on. (shrink)

The notion of a “query” occurred in legal, medical, theological and scientific writings during the early modern period. Whereas the “questionary” (from c. 1400s) sought replies from within a doctrine (such as Galenic medicine), in the 1600s the query posed open-ended inquiries, seeking empirical information from travellers, explorers and others. During the 1660s in Britain, three versions of the query (and lists of queries) emerged. Distinctions need to be made between queries seeking information via observation and those asking (...) for experimentation, and between those aiming to keep theory to one side and those that framed theoretical conjectures. My examples are drawn from the work of the Royal Society of London (founded 1660) and from some of its leading members, especially Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton. (shrink)

Especially after the 1610s, Tridentine Catholicism forcefully reasserted itself as a prominent political and intellectual force in the Spanish Netherlands. Integrating this reality into accounts of Spanish-Netherlandish science in the 17th century has been a considerable challenge for historians of science. The latter either turned their gazes elsewhere or assumed a fundamental incompatibility between “science” and “religion,” thus securing one dominant explanation for the classic thesis that the Spanish Netherlands largely “lost the plot” of (...) the so-called Scientific Revolution after the 1620s. This paper turns to a local debate on Thomas Fienus's embryological theses (1620), which has never been studied, to test the underlying assumption that “science” and “religion” can be taken as two distinct and/or opposed categories of historical analysis. I show that this assumption not only fails to capture historical actors' experiences and understandings, but also that it fails to consider how tensions between medicine and theology were positively productive. First, I argue that medical philosophizing was positively motivated by socio-religious concerns of its own. Second, I show that, far from being a protracted battle between two stable positions, the debate constituted an instance of boundary work, where medical philosophers like Fienus progressively tested and repositioned the theological credentials of their preferred theses. This ushered in the adoption of a probabilistic epistemology that increasingly secured Catholic theology's normative credibility and the pursuit of autonomous natural-philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The practices of Galenic pharmacy that dominated the Western pharmaceutical tradition throughout the medieval and early modern periods generally eschewed methods of alchemical processing and the use of high heat. A unique 10th-century Arabic pharmaceutical treatise, the Kitab al Tasrif by al-Zahrāwī/Abulcasis, however, discussed thermo-chemical techniques of distillation, calcination, and sublimation at length and would go on to have a major impact on Galenic pharmacy. It included recipes, for example, for two highly important distilled substances – rosewater and (...) Philosophers' Oil – that were copied and revised in Latin texts from the later Middle Ages and early modern Spanish formularies. By the end of the 16th century, these recipes had formed the basis for two new categories of distilled medicines – distilled waters and distilled oils – in Galenic pharmacy. Their inclusion in the Galenic formulary indicates that apothecaries in the Latin West were familiar with and indeed practicing thermo-chemical operations during the medieval and early modern periods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When an Arab Laughs in Toledo: Cervantes’s Interpellation of Early Modern Spanish OrientalismE. C. Graf (bio)My purpose has been to place in the plaza of our republic a game table which everyone can approach to entertain themselves without fear of being harmed by the rods; by which I mean without harm to spirit or body, because honest and agreeable exercises are always more likely to do (...) good than harm.—Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Prologue to Novelas ejemplares [my translation]We are engaged in a technical enterprise at the species scale.—Jacques Lacan, “L’agressivité en psychanalyse” [my translation]While I was all intent on watching him, he looked at me, and with his hands he spread his chest and said: “See how I split myself!”!—Dante Alighieri, Inferno 28.28–30 Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child (c. 1490). Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; ©1999 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Salvador Dalí, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening (1941). Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; ©1999 Artists' Rights Society (ARS), New York.For much of this century, Hispanists have labored in an effort to elevate Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) to the coveted status of the “first modern novel.” Today this kind of criticism may strike our postmodern sensibilities as a rather traditional enterprise, the kind more interested in establishing an elite hierarchy of literary tastes than in saying anything new about an author or text. For many, the study of literature is still an aesthetic beauty pageant in which “great books” like Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1767) or Marie de la Vergne de La Fayette’s La princesse de Clèves (1678) are paraded across the stage in a contest to seduce the Western intelligentsia. 1 The postmodern student of literature may not have much concern for this age-old territorial contest, but she might be interested to learn that the fallout from Hispanism’s quest for the “first modern novel” has involved so much attention to, indeed complication of, Don Quixote, that the book now resembles more a postmodern text than an early modern one. At the turn of the century, we have been left with what Jorge Luis Borges would recognize as an “aleph”: an infinite ideological labyrinth that reflects and/or cannibalizes all forms, thereby escaping all attempts [End Page 68] to describe it. 2 Whatever we currently mean by “Cervantes” (an author, a collection of texts, an ideological construction, and so forth) carries with it an impressive range of critical responses. Cervantes has been labeled converso (Castro, Canavaggio), Christian humanist (Castro, Bataillon, Forcione, Herrero, Vilanova), disillusioned secularist (Lukács, Cascardi), precapitalist (Johnson), anti-essentialist (Wilson), anti-Eusebian (Presberg), Menippean (Bakhtin), feminist (El Saffar, Rabin, Cruz), sadist (Nabokov), ethnocentric imperialist (Mariscal), medieval (Gorfkle), homophobic (Martín), non-organicist Aristotelian (Read), and either discursively or actually homosexual (Combet, Rossi, Smith, Arrabal). This list is nowhere near complete, but the reader will grasp the robust effects of the plurality of perspectives on Cervantes.Each of these interpretations is valid to varying degrees within various contexts, but at present I am interested in reading Cervantes as the author of a multicultural manifesto on behalf of the Moriscos of Southern Spain. 3 Within the contexts of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and Palestinian postcolonial literary critic Edward Said, materialist, postcolonial, and multicultural critiques of various forms of power and their ideologies can be seen as the fundamental propositions of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. 4 Cervantes’s ultimate orientation may perhaps be inescapably Eurocentric, but his responses to the European experience of the rise and expansion of an ethnocentric militaristic nation state are relatively centrifugal when compared to the attitudes of many of his contemporaries.In surveying some of the antihegemonic details of Cervantes’s novel, I am also interested in dispelling the popular myth of Don Quixote. Especially in the English-speaking world, and particularly in the United States, Don Quixote remains captive to a... (shrink)

Discursos de Machiaueli (Medina del Campo, 1552 & 1555) is Juan Lorenzo Ottevanti's Spanish translation of Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. This is the first critical edition of this text, whose aim is to reproduce not Machiavelli's but the translator's intention, thereby allowing scholars to examine the modes in which Machiavelli's political and military thought was made intelligible to Spaniards in the early modern period. In his Introduction, Howard demonstrates that its original publication engaged in fascinating ways (...) the ongoing Spanish imperial project in both the European and American contexts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the WorldAndrew KeittIn 1688 Anglican divine William Wharton published a short tract entitled The Enthusiasm of the Church of Rome demonstrated in some observations upon the life of Ignatius Loyola. Typical of the confessional propaganda of the day, Wharton's work contrasted the "rationality" of Protestantism with what he considered to be the superstition and obscurantism of the Catholic faith:It (...) has been the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to create a right sense of Religion and Piety in all her Communicants, and secure to them the practice of a rational Devotion. She makes no pretensions to private Inspirations, and extraordinary Illuminations of the Holy Ghost; and all her Children are more apt to deride, than admire the follies of the Enthusiasts.... Not so the Church of Rome, which in all her Offices and publick Ceremonies promotes and foments it, hath on many occasions given publick applause and approbation to it, and oweth the greatest part of her peculiar Doctrines, and present prosperity to the Enthusiasm of her Followers.1The "enthusiasm" to which Wharton refers had become the object of intense controversy in late seventeenth-century England. The term enthusiasm in this context meant highly emotional, deeply embodied religious experience in [End Page 231] the form of inspired raptures, miraculous revelations, and prophetic power. It was an epithet used with increasing frequency during this period to condemn not only Catholics but also members of radical Protestant sects such as the Diggers, Levellers, and Fifth Monarchy Men.The efforts of mainstream Protestant denominations to distance themselves from the "ultrasupernaturalism" of religious enthusiasts would seem to fit within a Weberian paradigm in which the Protestant Reformation functions as a catalyst for the "disenchantment of the world," the process by which the boundaries of the supernatural were supposedly rolled back in the modern West.2 Indeed, many historians of early modern Europe have adopted, either implicitly or explicitly, such a model. Lawrence Stone, for example, reflects this school of thought with his assertion that by the end of the seventeenth century, Protestantism's "more rational and coherent view of nature and its relationship to God's providence" created a worldview in which magical or miraculous explanations of events became increasingly untenable.3Catholicism, on the other hand, has often been portrayed as maintaining a more porous boundary between nature and supernature. Summarizing what he calls the "Weberian consensus," sociologist Peter Berger offers the following analysis, which reads remarkably like a translation of Wharton's characterization of Catholicism into the language of the social sciences:The Catholic lives in a world in which the sacred is mediated to him through a variety of channels—the sacraments of the church, the intercession of the saints, the recurring eruption of the "supernatural" in miracles—a vast continuity of being between the seen and the unseen.4In recent years, however, as historians have emphasized the structural parallels between the various confessions in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such stark contrasts have become increasingly suspect.5 Consequently, scholars have underscored the need for comparative work on the topic. Michael Heyd, for example, has suggested such a strategy in his work on the reaction to religious enthusiasm in seventeenth-century Europe.6 [End Page 232] Although Heyd focuses primarily on the English case, he recommends an integrative, comparative approach. He describes how religious enthusiasm became "the subject of detailed analysis—theological, social, psychological and even medical" in the closing decades of the seventeenth century in England, and he details the efforts of both religious and secular authorities "to distinguish carefully between true inspiration and a false one, between the natural realm and the truly supernatural."7 Heyd links this reaction against religious enthusiasm to the disenchantment of the world and asks to what extent these trends were unique to the Anglican tradition in England.8Lorraine Daston has emphasized the need for comparative study as well. Religious enthusiasm plays an important role in Daston's "historical epistemology," which traces the development of modern notions of "fact" and "evidence," and their relationship to changing attitudes toward the miraculous in early modern Europe. The... (shrink)

Astrology, its legitimacy, and the limits of its acceptable practice were debated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Many of the related arguments were mediated by the work of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the responses to it. Acknowledging the complexities of the relationship between astrological ideas and Christian teachings, this paper focuses on the Catholic debates by specifically considering the decisions about astrology taken by the Spanish Inquisition. The trials of astrologers are examined with the aim of understanding the (...) role of experts in astrology in early modern Spain. This study brings into view the specific nature of the debate on astrology in Spain, the consequences of the actions of the Inquisition and the social control it exerted. The historical events discussed comprise a particular case and also mirror the general debates about astrology taking place in early modern Europe. The experts’ opinions expressed in trials and in reports about the discipline received by the Inquisition reveal two key traits of the debate: the dispute about who had the authority to decide on the legitimacy of astrology and the disagreement about what constituted natural and judicial astrological practices. These led to different opinions about what was to be done with each defendant and about what content in their books ought to be forbidden. (shrink)

Galileo’s last publication, his Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla mecanica & i movimenti locali (1638), is widely considered to be one of the most influential contributions of early modern science to the emergence of classical physics. As the title of Galileo’s book indicates, he himself claimed to have established “two new sciences,” including a new science of motion which, from the perspective of classical physics, indeed turned the Aristotelean theory of (...) motion, which had prevailed for hundreds of years, into an obscure medieval relic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to report some little-known aspects of sixteenth-century physics as these relate to the development of mechanics in the seventeenth century. The research herein reported grew out of a study on the mechanics of Domingo de Soto, a sixteenth-century Spanish scholastic,1 which has been concerned, in part, with examining critically Pierre Duhem's thesis that the English “Calculatores” of the fourteenth century were a primary source for Galileo's science.2 The conclusion to which this has (...) come, thus far, is that Duhem had important insights into the late medieval preparation for the modern science of mechanics, but that he left out many of the steps. And the steps are important, whether one holds for a continuity theory or a discontinuity theory vis-à-vis the connection between late medieval and early modern science. (shrink)

This article explores the transformative power of art circulation by analysing surprising narratives of abducted fountains across the early modern Mediterranean area under the political influence of the Spanish Empire. The object of this study will be the stories of Italian fountains stolen by Spanish viceroys or rescued during naval skirmishes between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire. These narratives reveal a widespread desire for fountains throughout the Mediterranean, which generated a sequence of geographical relocations (...) and cultural translations. My aim is to conceptualise the desire for Italian fountains as an engine for continental circulation, taking into consideration several cases of stolen, abducted, or captive works of sculpture whose stories navigate the dubious boundaries of historical truth and resemble more popular episodes of thefts of relics or the kidnapping and trafficking of enslaved people. Sometimes demonstrable facts, sometimes charming legends linked to the suggestive power of water, these episodes disclose the life of monumental art in motion and subvert the widespread reading of fountains as site-specific objects. (shrink)

Pornographic Sensibilities stages a conversation between two fields-Medieval/Early Modern Hispanic Studies and Porn Studies-that traditionally have had little to say to each other. The collection offers innovative new approaches to the study of gendered and sexualized bodies in medieval and early modern textual production, including literary and historical documents. The volume's embrace of the interpretative tools of Porn Studies also inscribes a critical provocation: in what ways can contemporary modes of reading the past serve to freshly (...) illuminate not only the contours of that same past but also the very critical assumptions of the present upon which fields like medieval and early modern Hispanic Studies are built? In this way, Pornographic Sensibilities encourages at once both rigorous historicizations of pre- and early-modern culture, and playful engagement with "presentism," considered here as a critical tool to undress the hidden assumptions of both past and present. This move substantively challenges long-held critical orthodoxies among scholars of pre-Enlightenment periods, for whom the very category of "pornography" itself has often problematically been framed as an anachronism when applied to their work. (shrink)

Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) devoted more than 10 years of his life to developing a science of plants and vegetation, a project in which observation (often at the microscopic level) and experimentation played a prominent role. Grew started by composing a natural history of plants that was concerned with their anatomical structure and functioning, but, as I suggest, he also aimed to use observations and experiments to develop an experimental science that investigated the causes and principles of vegetation. Apart (...) from studying the structure of plants, Grew also treated them as instruments in which different chemical operations took place (such as filtration, digestion, fermentation, and the separation of particles of matter). At a methodological level, the science of plants and vegetation is a project based on experimental comparisons, variations, and extensions that, in some cases, led Grew to revise his explicative hypothesis. (shrink)

Bringing together an international team of historians of science and philosophy to discuss the fate of matter and form, this volume shows how disputes about matter and form spurred innovation as well as conservatism in early modern science ...

The vast majority of canonical early modern authors reject Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Instead, many of them are mechanists, that is, they explain all natural change in the material world simply through the motions and collisions of inertial matter in motion. This typically means that they deny that there is immanent teleology in the natural world; sometimes, it even means eliminating purposiveness from natural philosophy altogether. Thus, some writers attempt to provide explanations of natural phenomena that do not (...) rely on teleology. Because this proves enormously difficult, others retain, or reintroduce, teleology in various forms. -/- The section “Rejections of Teleology” explores the reasons why certain early modern authors reject teleology more or less generally. The section “Defenses of Extrinsic Teleology” shows that quite a few writers embrace extrinsic teleology: they hold that many natural things and processes have ends in virtue of being part of God’s plan for the world. Some of these authors also advocate the use of teleology in natural philosophy, for instance, to discover natural laws. Finally, the section “Defenses of Immanent Teleology” shows that there are a few early modern philosophers and scientists who go even further than that, insisting on the need for immanent teleology in the natural world. (shrink)

In his many contributions to the history of science and the history of philosophy, the late Charles Schmitt demonstrated the interdependence of these two spheres of thought in early modern Europe. Schmitt was particularly insistent on a large and positive role for Aristotelian philosophy in the development of early modern science.

Most historians of science eagerly acknowledge that the early modern period witnessed a shift from a prevailing Aristotelian, spherical, centered conception of space to a prevailing Cartesian, rectilinear, oriented spatial framework. Indeed, this shift underlay many of the important advances for which the period is celebrated. However, historians have failed to engage the general conceptual shift, focusing instead on the particular explanatory developments that resulted. This historical lacuna can be attributed to a historiographical problem: the lack of (...) an adequate unit of analysis by which to investigate the conceptual change. Here, a philosophical argument is made for representations of space as an appropriate category of historical investigation, and methods of textual interrogation are suggested to this end. Finally, two examples, taken from Aristotle and Newton, demonstrate the feasibility and importance of this project. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Histories of Science in Early Modern Europe:IntroductionRobert GouldingIn 1713, Pierre Rémond de Montmort wrote to the mathematician Nicolas Bernoulli:It would be desirable if someone wanted to take the trouble to instruct how and in what order the discoveries in mathematics have come about.... The histories of painting, of music, of medicine have been written. A good history of mathematics, especially of geometry, would be a much (...) more interesting and useful work.... Such a work, if done well, could be regarded to some extent as a history of the human mind, since it is in this science, more than in anything else, that man makes known that gift of intelligence that God has given him to rise above all other creatures.1Such a history of mathematics was attempted by Jean-Etienne Montucla in his Histoire des mathématiques (first printed in 1758, and reissued in a [End Page 33] greatly expanded form in 1799).2 Montucla's great work is generally acknowledged as the first genuine history of mathematics. According to some modern historians, previous attempts at such a history had amounted to little more than collections of anecdotes, biographies or exhaustive bibliographies: "jumbles of names, dates and titles," as one writer in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography characterized them.3 Montucla, on the other hand, was thoroughly animated by the Enlightenment project expressed in Rémond's letter, and his Histoire was a philosophical history of the "development of the human mind," as he himself described it.4 It was precisely Montucla's vision of what mathematics meant and his conviction that mathematics itself must change in order to reflect the historical elevation of the human intellect, that allowed him to transform the scattered dates and anecdotes of his predecessors into a genuine history. All subsequent histories of mathematics—until the most recent social histories5 —have been in a sense "footnotes to Montucla."The papers here argue that there were indeed histories of mathematics before Montucla which are worthy of scholarly attention, and that the dismissal of Renaissance histories of science as nothing more than a "cloud of fine adjectives and metaphors" is unfair (although it contains a germ of truth). Anthony Grafton has argued in an article on the historical writings of Cardano, Rheticus, and Kepler, that the purpose of such texts was not so much to trace what actually happened, as to justify the study of a subject often derided—by both humanist and scholastic writers—as obscure, useless and undignified.6 The following four papers go further in arguing that writings in this genre (or, at least, some writings in this genre) were not limited to this characteristically humanist objective. Authors did not just use their histories to persuade others. They themselves relied on historical narratives in order to think about their discipline, define its parts, distinguish among its acceptable and unacceptable forms and prescribe its content [End Page 34] and method of teaching. By placing their discipline into a historical context shared by other, more mainstream humanistic arts, moreover, they could draw upon the large, narrative structures which Renaissance humanists had adapted to understand human intellectual and cultural development, origins, progress and decline.James Byrne's article highlights a disparity of vision between those humanists who treated the origin of the arts as just another subject for humanistic display; and those (like Regiomontanus) who were invested in the arts and wrote their histories from an insider's perspective. Alongside Regiomontanus, one could include several other authors treated in this collection, such as Thomas Vaughan, Peter Ramus, and Henry Savile. In each case, history provided a means for working through problems of the legitimacy and nature of their disciplines. While their writings are not "histories of the human mind," their interests went beyond mere rehearsal of anecdotes. Ramus's histories, for instance, written 200 years before Montucla's Histoire, had the kind of unifying vision which de Montmort demanded, and shared Montucla's concern to find a meaning in the development of mathematics. Ramus, and the supporters and detractors he spawned, were convinced that constructing the history of this science was crucial to understanding how and why human beings have... (shrink)

The separation of science and religion in modern secular culture can easily obscure the fact that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe ideas about nature were intimately related to ideas about God. Readers of this book will find fresh and exciting accounts of a phenomenon common to both science and religion: deviation from orthodox belief. How is heterodoxy to be measured? How might the scientific heterodoxy of particular thinkers impinge on their religious views? Would heterodoxy in religion create (...) a predisposition towards heterodoxy in science? Might there be a homology between heterodox views in both domains? Such major protagonists as Galileo and Newton are re-examined together with less familiar figures in order to bring out the extraordinary richness of scientific and religious thought in the pre-modern world. (shrink)

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of (...) class='Hi'>science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. (shrink)

The separation of science and religion in modern secular culture can easily obscure the fact that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe ideas about nature were intimately related to ideas about God. Readers of this book will find fresh and exciting accounts of a phenomenon common to both science and religion: deviation from orthodox belief. How is heterodoxy to be measured? How might the scientific heterodoxy of particular thinkers impinge on their religious views? Would heterodoxy in religion create (...) a predisposition towards heterodoxy in science? Might there be a homology between heterodox views in both domains? Such major protagonists as Galileo and Newton are re-examined together with less familiar figures in order to bring out the extraordinary richness of scientific and religious thought in the pre-modern world. (shrink)

Is it anachronistic to talk about racism in Hobbes? After all, racism is usually seen as biological: the disliked group must have innate characteristics which are inherited biologically. This is mostly said to be a modern idea. Yet biological racism can be found in medieval and early modern times, as with the Spanish doctrine of limpieza de sangre (cleanliness/purity of blood). Racism, including biological racism, was much more common in Hobbes’s England than we might think, including (...) in texts he may have read; the language of race was hardly uncommon either. Moreover, someone can be called a racist whether or not their dislike of a group is based on characteristics of a group that are inherited biologically, I argue. Whether Hobbes was a racist remains open to debate; this paper offers evidence both for and against that proposition. But we should not reject the question of Hobbes’s racism as anachronistic. (shrink)

The following essay is divided in three parts. First, while sharing in principle Harrison's hypothesis of an affinity between the sixteenth-century Reformation and early modern science, it questions the connection between the latter and the Weberian “disenchantment of the world.” Second, it suggests a broader group of possible actors than that envisaged by Harrison in referring to virtuoso collectors and their cabinets of curiosities who are rather marginalized in Harrison's narrative. And third, it highlights the physico-theology of (...) the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century and beyond as an important temporary fusion of religion/theology and science at a time when the new science was still striving for social and religious respectability. (shrink)

In early modern science, the struggle between feminine and masculine allegories of science was played out within fixed parameters. Whether science itself was to be considered masculine or feminine, there never was serious debate about the gender of nature, one the one hand, or of the scientist, on the other. From ancient to modern times, nature—the object of scientific study—has been conceived as unquestionably female.5 At the same time, it is abundantly clear that the (...) practitioners of science, scientists, themselves, overwhelmingly have been men.But what about science? What gender was it—as an activity and set of ideals—to have? In one tradition the answer was clear: science was a woman. This tradition, stretching back at least to Boethius’ sixth-century portrayal of Philosophy as a woman, was codified and explained in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, the Renaissance bible of iconography.6 In this work, Ripa portrayed each of the sciences as a woman. “Scientia”—knowledge or skill—was portrayed as a woman of serious demeanor, wearing stately robes . “Physica”—physical science—was a goddess with a terrestrial globe at her feet. Geometry was a woman holding a plumb line and compass. Astrology, too, was a woman, dressed in blue, with a crown of stars and wings signifying the elevation of her thoughts to the distant stars. With a compass in her right hand and the celestial sphere in her left, she studied the movement and symmetry of the skies. 5. See Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution .6. Boethius describes female Philosophy as she appeared to him in a dream in his De consolatione philosophiae. See also Cesare Ripa, Iconologia , first illustrated in 1603. Londa Schiebinger is an assistant professor of history at Pennsylvania State University. Her book, “The Mind has no Sex”: Women in the Origins of Modern Science, will be published next spring. (shrink)

This chapter surveys how individuals were identified and whether their movement was controlled in early modern Spain and Spanish America. It argues that because Spanish structures assumed the existence of a freedom to immigrate, most processes aimed at registering identities were concerned not with immigration but with distinguishing ‘good’ from ‘bad’ movement, fraudulent changes in identity from honest reshaping of who individuals were. Although similar rules were applied in both the Old and the New World, nevertheless (...) new regulations did emerge in the Americas, requiring identifying individuals as ‘Spaniards’ on the one hand, and limiting movement by natives as long as their civic and religious conversion was not guaranteed, on the other. As a result, in the New World, processes of identification were more acute and more frequent than in Spain. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Portuguese and Spanish empires were both global and long lasting. This essay focuses on colonial Spanish America, particularly on the practices of natural history. It also suggests that chivalric‐epic ideologies permeated early modern epistemologies, including those of the French and the British. The essay criticizes the application of nineteenth‐century models of empire to the understanding of the early modern composite monarchies in the New World. Finally, it explores the ways metropolitan natural philosophy (...) was transformed in the New World kingdoms to bolster patriotic identities. (shrink)

This volume explores the intersection between early modern philosophy and the life sciences by presenting the contributions of important but often neglected figures such as Cudworth, Grew, Glisson, Hieronymus Fabricius, Stahl, Gallego, Hartsoeker, and More, as well as familiar figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, and Kant.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Religious Knowledge: Skepticism, Fideism, Reasonableness Atheism and Deism Science and Religion Biblical Criticism and the History of Religion Materialism and Immaterialism God, Space, and Time Creation, Freedom, and Laws of Nature Works cited.

The following essay is divided in three parts. First, while sharing in principle Harrison's hypothesis of an affinity between the sixteenth‐century Reformation and early modern science, it questions the connection between the latter and the Weberian “disenchantment of the world.” Second, it suggests a broader group of possible actors than that envisaged by Harrison in referring to virtuoso collectors and their cabinets of curiosities who are rather marginalized in Harrison's narrative. And third, it highlights (in agreement with (...) Harrison) the physico‐theology of the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century and beyond as an important temporary fusion of religion/theology and science at a time when the new science was still striving for social and religious respectability. (shrink)

The History of Western Philosophy of Religion brings together an international team of over 100 leading scholars to provide authoritative exposition of how history's most important philosophical thinkers - from antiquity to the present day - have sought to analyse the concepts and tenets central to Western religious belief, especially Christianity. Divided chronologically into five volumes, The History of Western Philosophy of Religion is designed to be accessible to a wide range of readers, from the scholar looking for original insight (...) and the latest research findings to the student wishing for a masterly encapsulation of a particular philosopher's views. Together these volumes provide an indispensable resource for anyone conducting research or teaching in the philosophy of religion and related fields, such as theology, religious studies, the history of philosophy, and the history of ideas. Volume 3 covers the early modern period which witnessed a revolution in science and natural philosophy that swept away two millennia of Aristotelian certainty in a human-centred universe. Covering some of the most important figures in the history of Western thought - notably Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant - Early Modern Philosophy of Religion charts the philosophical understanding of religion at a time of intellectual and spiritual revolution. (shrink)