Early Modern Science

Reviews: British Journal for the History of Science 45(2012), S. 288–290 (N. Kaoukji); Emblematica. An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 19(2012), S. 327-333 (J. Sawday); Catholic Historical Review 98(2012), S. 573f (K. Howell); Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 74(2012), S. 200-202 (S. Taussig); Print Quarterly 29(2012), S. 454-458 (E. Reeves); Historians of Netherlandish Art Review of Books 2012 (E. Jorink).

Reviews of the German edition: The Library 7(2006), S. 473f (J. L. Flood); Journal for the History of Astronomy 37(2006), S. 471ff (N. Jardine); American Historical Review 112(2007), S. 265f (G. Scholz Williams); Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 120(2007), S. 252f (A. de Bruycker); Sehepunkte. Rezensionsjournal für die Ge¬schichtswissenschaften 7(2007), Nr. 9 (M. Bronscheuer); History of Universities 22(2007), S. 258-261 (A. de Bruycker); NTM. Internationale Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Ethik der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, N.S. 15(2007), S. 303f (A. Kleinert); Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 34(2007), S. 705-707 (A. Brendecke); Renaissance Quarterly 60(2007), S. 1416f (A. Mosley); Nuncius. Journal of the History of Science 22(2)(2007), S. 384f (H. Bredekamp); Morgen-Glantz. Zeitschrift der Christian Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesellschaft 18(2008), S. 228ff (J. J. Berns); Fachsprache. Internationale Zeitschrift für Fachsprachenforschung 30(2008), S. 200-202 (J. Engberg/P. Kastberg); Isis 99(2008), S. 844-846 (S. de Angelis); Zeitschrift für Ger¬ma¬nistik 19(2009), S. 483f (M. Neumann).

This most recent edition of the bibliography contains almost 21,200 titles in English (64%) and French (36%), with an introductory section on historiography. It deals with every aspect of Italian history and culture from the Late Renaissance to the French Revolution.

Richard Waller, Fellow and Secretary of the Royal Society, is probably best remembered for editing Robert Hooke’s posthumously published works. Yet, Waller also created numerous drawings, paintings, and engravings for his own work and the Society’s publications. From precisely observed grasses to allegorical frontispieces, Waller’s images not only contained a diverse range of content, they are some of the most beautiful, colorful, and striking from the Society’s early years. This article argues that Waller played a distinctly important role in shaping the visual program of the Royal Society by virtue of his multiple functions as reliable administrator and translator, competent natural philosopher, and skilled image-maker. It analyzes Waller’s visual works in the context of his graphic training—in part influenced by his mother Mary More—and situates them within the context of English image-making traditions and Waller’s own natural philosophical interests. Examined as a functional whole, Waller’s career as a Fellow of the Royal Society emerges as an important case study in the fusion of visual and scientific practices in early-modern England.

This comparative and historical examination of the ethos of science finds significant examples of the Mertonian ethos in university discussions from the 12th through the 14th century. The institutionalization of naturalistic inquiry based on Aristotelian modes of argument and demonstration was unique to Western Europe and did not occur in China or the Islamic Middle East. Nevertheless, Merton's writings on the ethos show no indication of his relying upon the rich historical evidence of Europe when formulating his famous conception.

Visuelle Strategien zur Konturierung eines jesuitischen Wissensreiches, in: Oy-Marra, Elisabeth/Remmert, Volker R. (eds.): „Le monde est une peinture“. Jesuitische Identität und die Rolle der Bilder, Berlin 2011 [Beiträge zu den Historischen Kulturwissenschaften 7], 85-108

Was Bruno burned at the stake because of his cosmological ideas? In his recently published book Michael White presents an interpretation of historical events based on the concept of the conflicting relationship between science and religion. By examinating the reasons for which Giordano Bruno was burned, the article tries to prove that the conflicting model lacks credibility.

In this monograph, Steffen Ducheyne provides a historically detailed and systematically rich explication of Newton’s methodology. Throughout the pages of this book, it will be shown that Newton developed a complex natural-philosophical methodology which encompasses procedures to minimize inductive risk during the process of theory formation and which, thereby, surpasses a standard hypothetico-deductive methodological setting. Accordingly, it will be highlighted that the so-called ‘Newtonian Revolution’ was not restricted to the empirical and theoretical dimensions of science, but applied equally to the methodological dimension of science. Furthermore, it will be documented that Newton’s methodology was far from static and that it developed alongside with his scientific work. Attention will be paid not only to the successes of Newton’s innovative methodology, but equally to its tensions and limitations. Based on a thorough study of Newton’s extant manuscripts, this monograph will address and contextualize, inter alia, Newton’s causal realism, his views on action at a distance and space and time, the status of efficient causation in the Principia, the different phases of his methodology, his treatment of force and the constituents of the physico-mathematical models in the context of Book I of the Principia, the analytic part of the argument for universal gravitation, the meaning and significance of his regulae philosophandi, the methodological differences between his mechanical and optical work, and, finally, the the interplay between Newton’s theology and his natural philosophy.

From antiquity to our present day, scientists specifically cosmologists and physicists, are still on their relentless pursuit to understand the nature and structure of universe with all it’s components. We all know of  or at leat have heard of brilliant minds such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck and others who have contributed to our present conception of the nature of reality. One of those brilliant minds of the 20th and 21st century upon whose work I am going to give an overview is Stephen Hawking. Professor Stephen Hawking who studied at both Oxford and Cambridge University, held the Chair Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge England, a chair that was once held by Isaac Newton. He is without a doubt the leading cosmologist of our time. He is to the 20th and 21st century what Charles Darwin was to the 19th century with his mechanism for the theory of evolution. Even though Professor Hawking is bound physically by ALS or Motor Neurone Disease, yet this did not cause an impediment to his cognitive faculties. That’s why we have several books to which he is the author of and it my aim to give an overview of one of his most iconic books which was a bestseller for 237 weeks. This book is  entitled ‘A Brief History of Time - From the Big Bang to Black Holes.’

In October 1548, Leonardo Fioravanti, a thirty-year old undistinguished surgeon from Bologna, faced a crisis moment in his life. A university dropout who had become disenchanted with traditional medicine, he had been practicing surgery for fifteen years and his career was at a standstill. Yet he hungered for fame. So Fioravanti did what other restless individuals of the Renaissance did: he went out "into the world" to seek new secrets and, to employ a modern manner of speaking, to find himself. As he recalled in his autobiography, published as part of his book, Treasury of Human Life, "I left my home sweet home, Bologna, solely with the intention of traveling throughout the world in order to gain knowledge of natural philosophy." His search took him wandering all over the Mediterranean world, "by land and by sea" [as he put it], learning secrets from empirics, distillers, shepherds, farmers, and surgeons. We have no way of knowing how competent a surgeon Fioravanti was when he left Bologna. Doubtless, as he admits, he had much to learn. But of one thing we can be certain: that

RIASSUNTO La meteorologia tradizionale, impigliata nella cosmologia aristotelica più a lungo di altre parti della scienza naturale, è una scienza sparita e quasi dimenticata dalla ricerca storica. Colla sua sintesi straordinaria di trattato di meteorologia, libello d'emblema, e specchio di principe, la Meteorologia di Reinzer ci dà occasione di localizzare più precisa-mente la meteorologia premoderna nel suo contesto intellettuale ed isti-tuzionale, e di mostrare le sue relazioni col pensiero scientifico, colle tradizioni della natura moralizzata o della teologia naturale, e col pro-gramma politico-didattico dei Gesuiti alla fine del Seicento.

Paper and slides presented at the 25th International Congress of History of Science and Technology (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 23-29, 2017) - Symposium S28, "Multiple Spaces: Mapping Communication via Letters between Naturalists"
(International Commission on the History of Geological Sciences)

Among her many accomplishments, Spanish intellectual and artist Cecilia Morillas (1539-1581) is remembered for her correspondence with King Philip himself and her numerous artistic talents, including the illustration of manuscript documents and maps, which she often used to illustrate her scientific knowledge. Morillas’s artistic and scientific contributions in her lifetime may have been obscured by the fact that she utilized traditionally ‘feminine’ materials, yet her case is important to highlight as it illustrates the intersection between art and science during the early modern period and provides insight into the domestic education of young women in Spain.  A counterpoint to the conservative model of humanistic education, Morillas cultivated a home environment that enabled her children to develop considerable skills and talents in both the arts and sciences, often utilizing the moralizing endorsement of domestic chores, especially for her daughters, as an entry point into a variety of intellectual pursuits. This article contributes new dimensions to Morillas’s biography and the status of her family by bringing together for the first time a variety of unpublished archival documents. In addition to fleshing out the biography of this erudite woman, this article points to the ‘domestic arts’ as a legitimate realm of women’s intellectualism not only for Cecilia Morillas, but as a case study for the period.

According to Peter Harrison's book The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (1998) modern science came into existence as a result of the emphasis of Protestants on the literal sense of the Scripture, their refusal of the earlier symbolic or allegorical interpretation, and their efforts at fixing the meaning of the biblical text in which each passage was to be ascribed a single and unique meaning. This article tries to summarize the most significant critiques of Harrison's hypothesis (by Kenneth Howell, Jiste van der Meer and Richard Oosterhoff) and to acknowledge their legitimacy. However, the alternative explanation of the emergence of modern science as a result of disputes over the biblical interpretation and the subsequent discovery of the ambiguous character of the ordinary verbal language is not fully satisfactory either.

Leonardo's enduring fascination with water―from its artistic representation to aquatic inventions and hydraulic engineering.

Formless, mutable, transparent: the element of water posed major challenges for the visual artists of the Renaissance. To the engineers of the era, water represented a force that could be harnessed for human industry but was equally possessed of formidable destructive power. For Leonardo da Vinci, water was an enduring fascination, appearing in myriad forms throughout his work. In Watermarks, Leslie Geddes explores the extraordinary range of Leonardo’s interest in water and shows how artworks by him and his peers contributed to hydraulic engineering and the construction of large river and canal systems.

From drawings for mobile bridges and underwater breathing apparatuses to plans for water management schemes, Leonardo evinced a deep interest in the technical aspects of water. His visual studies of the ways in which landscape is shaped by water demonstrated both his artistic mastery and probing scientific mind. Analyzing Leonardo’s notebooks, plans, maps, and paintings, Geddes argues that, for Leonardo and fellow artists, drawing was a form of visual thinking and problem solving essential to understanding and controlling water and other parts of the natural world. She also examines the material importance in this work of water-based media, namely ink, watercolor, and oil paint.

A compelling account of Renaissance art and engineering, Watermarks shows, above all else, how Leonardo applied his pictorial genius to water in order to render the natural world in all its richness and constant change.

La prima traduzione italiana integrale del trattato Astrologia Cristiana di William Lilly, comparso a Londra nel 1647 e subito diventato opera di riferimento fondamentale per la storia e la pratica dell’astrologia oraria.  In questo volume, il secondo della serie, le domande relative alle prime sei case, che comprendono argomenti quali: la durata della vita, la datazione degli eventi, l'aspetto fisico delle persone, il ritrovamento e il destino di persone scomparse, la sicurezza in viaggio, la ricchezza e la fortuna, fratelli e sorelle, trasferimenti e spostamenti, voci e dicerie, oggetti smarriti, tesori nascosti, proprietà, terreni e coltivazioni, compravendita di immobili, eredità familiari e rapporti con i genitori, fertilità e sterilità, gravidanza e figli, ambasciatori e messaggeri, servitù e altro ancora. Del massimo interesse la sezione molto dettagliata e consistente dedicata alle domande sulla salute e alle carte di decubito, alla diagnosi e alla prognosi delle malattie, alle terapie e ai medicamenti.
Seguono tre saggi di Patrizia Nava sulle origini storiche della pratica oraria in epoca ellenistica, sul metodo di analisi di Lilly e sul suo debito, pienamente riconosciuto dall’autore stesso, nei confronti di un altro grande medico-astrologo del XVI secolo, Claude Dariot.

This chapter explores the prospects and consequences of various ways to forge Newton ian connections to Hume's philosophy. Two points of view are offered from which these connections are visible and evaluable: first, Hume's experimental method for the studying of the mind, particularly his reliance on analysis, synthesis and successive approxima tions in relation to Newton's method and Newton-inspired methodologies; and second, the relation of Hume's model of the mind to Newton's model of the natural world, particu larly the congruence of Hume's theory of association with the chemical idea of elective affinities as opposed to gravity. In conclusion, the chapter summarizes the significance of these connections for competing interpretations of Hume's science of the mind.

I miracoli arrivano all'improvviso, come un fulmine a ciel sereno. La liquefazione del sangue di san Gennaro si ripete invece da secoli in occorrenze precise. «Nessuna legge naturale è in grado di spiegare un fenomeno che si verifichi soltanto in date liturgicamente significative» è stato detto. Eppure de Ceglia dimostra che nel Medioevo il sangue di san Gennaro era inteso come una sostanza semplicemente instabile e ricostruisce le vicende che hanno conferito alle sue liquefazioni l'euritmia che le rende cosí celebri. «I capricci non piacciono a nessuno. Davanti a comportamenti refrattari a ogni norma, all'inizio l'entusiasmo è incontenibile, poi i fedeli si stancano di un oggetto che, senza una chiara ragione, ora è in un modo ora in un altro, cosí lo abbandonano smorzandone gli slanci vitali. Ecco perché quel sangue non avrebbe potuto godere a lungo della libertà di gorgogliare come e quando desiderasse, trovandosi invece nella condizione di dover acquisire una forma: un modo di manifestarsi, cioè, cosí peculiare da renderlo unico nell'orbe cristiano».

La liquefazione periodica del sangue di san Gennaro non è ufficialmente riconosciuta come miracolosa dalla Chiesa cattolica, che piú cautamente ora parla di prodigio. Ma il fenomeno è stato per secoli chiamato miracolo in testi liturgici approvati dall'autorità ecclesiastica e in discorsi di vescovi, cardinali, papi e santi. L'Inquisizione ha inoltre sottoposto a formali processi coloro che lo hanno attribuito a cause naturali. La questione del riconoscimento ufficiale, se ha un senso per gli ultimi cinquant'anni, ne ha dunque tanto meno quanto piú ci si spinga indietro nel tempo. Perché quel mutare in determinate circostanze fu di fatto considerato un miracolo ed è questo ciò che interessa allo storico. Come si può però far storia naturale di qualcosa che per definizione supera l'ordine del creato? La ricostruzione che qui si abbozza non si interroga sul miracolo in sé, bensí sulla cultura che lo ha identificato come tale. Obiettivo di questo lavoro è infatti ripercorrere in chiave antropologica gli sforzi compiuti da uomini e donne del passato per concettualizzare un fenomeno complesso e sfuggevole. Il miracolo di san Gennaro assurge cosí a punto di osservazione privilegiato da cui ripercorrere non solo la storia di Napoli, ma anche e soprattutto l'evoluzione della mentalità di chi, persino in terre assai lontane, con quell'appuntamento periodico si è nel tempo confrontato. E consente di delineare una storia della meraviglia e della sua funzione conoscitiva. Un racconto di cuori che battono all'impazzata, di mani che pregano e di gole riarse dalle incessanti giaculatorie. Ma anche di occhi che scrutano alla ricerca di un senso. O semplicemente di un perché.

Early modern scholars and statesmen were acutely aware of the need for improved standards of measurement, albeit for differing reasons. The variety of man-made units across territories and histories was, by the seventeenth century, already a sceptical commonplace, and was understood in terms of the mutability of human institutions. The late seventeenth century saw many scholars advance possible candidates for a universal standard. The most promising of these was the use of a seconds pendulum as a standard for length, a project which was actively pursued by the French Académie Royale des Sciences in the 1670s and 1680s, and remained a goal cherished by savants through the eighteenth century. This paper’s first section places the Académie’s early metrological projects in the context of the scholarly community’s ideal of a universal measurement standard, which was often expressed in ways combining political, theological, and humanistic concerns. Melchisédech Thévenot’s ludic proposal that honeycombs might be a length standard is explored as one example. The second section examines the Académie’s attempts to test the seconds pendulum as a universal length standard, by taking the missions to Uraniborg (1671) and to London (1679) as case studies in the practice of metrological work.

This article is devoted to the treatise Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti (‘Experiments on the generation of insects’) published in 1668 by Francesco Redi. The latter is today celebrated as the first scientist to have experimentally disproved the thousand-year belief in spontaneous generation, a theory commonly attributed to Aristotle. 
In the introduction, I present Redi and his treatise: Redi spent his whole life at the Medici court as personal physician of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and attended the Accademia del Cimento (‘The Academy of Experiment’), the scientific society founded by the Grand Duke Ferdinand II and his brother Leopoldo to make Galileo's legacy revive. The Esperienze is not written in Latin, but in the vernacular, while the introduction to the treatise displays a plea for experimental method that is today considered a manifesto of New Science.
I start analysing Aristotle’s definition of ‘spontaneous generation’, pointing out how, according to the Stagirite, spontaneous generation is an exceptional sort of generation, exclusively due to material principles and occurring by chance, that is, without a formal principle (semen, egg). Then, I remark that Redi’s target is not Aristotle’s explication for spontaneous generation. In fact, no critic has ever noticed that in his treatise Redi polemically hints (albeit in very allusive manner) to contemporary theories on spontaneous generation, namely the ones by Fortunio Liceti and Pierre Gassendi.
Redi is mostly known for the experiment of the sealed jars with which he would have demonstrated that rotten meat doesn’t breed maggots and, more broadly, that living beings are always generated by parents. However, I stress some important inconsistencies in Redi’s experimental accounts. For instance, he claims that eggs laid by flies on rotten meat are perfectly visible to the unaided eye. They look exactly like small bird eggs, complete with shell and albumen. He even reports that, after the hatching, one will find the empty shells of fly eggs. I suggest that with his narration Redi is not giving us an objective scientific account, but rather trying to disproof the most advanced theories on spontaneous generation of his time. As for the above-mentioned example, I think that Redi’s insistence on the visibility of fly eggs was dictated by the desire to contrast Gassendi, according to whom spontaneous generation is due to invisible primordial seeds floating in the air.
In the second part of his treatise, Redi deals with parasites that apparently originate from living beings (plants, animals). Redi argues that in this case it is the soul of the host organism that generates the insects (zoogenetic theory). For instance, as for gall-flies, he considers galls as eggs laid by plants and gall-flies as the genuine offspring of the plants. Critics have suggested different explanations to justify such a shocking stance supported by the man today celebrated as ‘the father of experimental biology’. I examine Redi’s theory on gall-flies and come to the conclusion that, again, to fully understand Redi’s treatise we need to situate it in the context of the contemporary debate on spontaneous generation. More specifically, we need to concretely situate it in the context of the Medici court. Thanks to Redi’s private correspondence, we know that Leopoldo de’ Medici endorsed the zoogenetic theory – that actually is not even an original elaboration by Redi.
Further, by thoroughly analysing Redi’s version of the zoogenetic theory, I show how the Tuscan naturalist tried to accord it with the principle of parental generation that he had firmly asserted in the first part of his treatise. In fact, Redi tries to establish a regular correspondence between plants and insects, that is, that each plant has its specific parasite. Moreover, he insists on the non-casual nature of such generations. In this manner, he presents the generation of insects from plants as perfectly regular from an Aristotelian point of view, that is, as non-spontaneous.
In the conclusions, I underline Redi’s ability in fashioning himself as a modern scientist, a posture he assumed in all probability to appeal the taste of his patrons. However, I also underline how historiography has tended to focus on Redi’s aspects that are best suitable to our scientific culture, neglecting the polemical essence of the Esperienze as well as Redi debt towards the Aristotelian tradition.

Protože česká komeniologie a intelektuální historie dosud postrádají komplexnější monografické pojednání o vztahu Komenský – Bacon, je cílem této knihy přiblížit koncepci reformy (respektive obnovy) vědění obsaženou v dílech obou jmenovaných osobností – českého teologa, filozofa a pedagogického reformátora Jana Amose Komenského (1592–1670) a anglického filozofa a státníka Francise Bacona (1561–1626). Zatímco v první části knihy jsou cesty obou myslitelů k vrcholné podobě jejich vizí sledovány odděleně, druhá část se soustředí na zodpovězení především těch otázek, které oba autory spojují: V čem spočívá jádro projektu reformy vědění u Komenského a v čem u Bacona? Jaká je struktura a koncepce jejich projektů? Jedná se o projekt obnovy, nebo o vizi pokroku vědění? Jak si Komenský a Bacon představovali realizaci svých záměrů? Jakou metodu k tomu zvolili? Do jaké míry byl Komenský Baconem ovlivněn? Co je pojítkem obou projektů? Na základě odpovědí na tyto otázky se autor v závěru knihy pokouší rozřešit dlouhodobý interpretační spor o povaze Komenského vztahu k Baconovi: Byl Komenský významným pokračovatelem a propagátorem Baconova díla? Nebo byl naopak myslitelem, který Baconův odkaz zjednodušil a zvulgarizoval? Anebo byl Komenský vskutku svébytnou filozofickou osobností, jež byla inspirována spíše jen duchem Baconova díla?

[Iconography of insects in the "Gadrens of Health". Case study of animal depictions in late 15th/early 16th c.].
The article presents the method of displaying insects popular at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries in compendiums of the Gart der Gesundheit species. The first Polish-language text by Stefan Falimirz, O ziołach y o moczy gich is the subject of detailed research. It is a medical compendium that can serve as an illustration of the initial stage of scientific research. Before insects were learned to be observed in entomological collections, they were first presented in medical texts.

Se estudia la cosmología y la explicación de los cometas desarrollada por fray Diego Rodríguez, primer catedrático de matemáticas de la Real y Pontificia Universidad de México, en su "Discurso etheorologico del nuevo cometa" (1652-1653). Se defiende que, conforme a la visión renacentista que privilegiaba la semejanza para la estructuración del mundo (Foucault, 1966), en el discurso cometario de Diego Rodríguez la utilización de analogías va a tener una importancia fundamental para la conformación de su visión celeste.

Galileo’s early inquiries on motion and free fall in Pisa (1588-1592) can be regarded as a case study of multiple knowledge-transfer at the very basic roots of modern mechanics. The until 1890 unpublished treatise De motu is an original but unsuccessful attempt to go beyond Aristotelian physics by extending Archimedean hydrostatics to the dynamics of natural motion and reappraising the late-medieval impetus theory to account for violent motion and acceleration. I will discuss in particular why Galileo was forced to abandon his project before moving to Padua and how the manuscripts De motu provided him with a “research agenda” for further theoretical and experimental investigation.

of Col,owrs is rightly considered a la¡rdmark in the history of analytical chemistry. In that work, Boyle described a number of simple but elegant experiments which ultimately gave chemists a powerful tool for determining the composition of compounds. He found, for example, that the common acids turned the blue syrup of violets red, and that alkalis turned it green. Subsequent experiments with other vegetable juices, including privet berries (Ligustrwm tulgare), buckthorn berries, (Rhamnus cathørticø), cornflowers (Centauris cyønis), and turnsole (Crozoþhora. tinctoria), revealed similar colour changes when treated with acids and alkalis.l Although some of these reactions had been noticed earlier, Boyle was the first to recognize the signiûcance of these substances as chemical reagents, for he alone observed that al,l acids turned such blue vegetable juices red, and lhat øIl alkalis turned them green. Furthermore, he noticed that some substances caused no colour change; these Boyle classified as neutral, neither acid nor alkaline, and thus "effectively disposed of the theory that all substances were one or the other".2 Recent scholarship has shown that an extensive literature on the analysis of aqueous solutions existed prior to Boyle's work, notably in the writings of physicians on the medicinal virtues of spa waters. Professor Allen Debus, for example, pointed out that Edward Jorden (r569-t6gz), an English physician trained at Padua, observed that bases turned scarlet cloth blue, while acids turned it red again; the colour change of tincture of violets and of rose leaves in the presence of oil of vitriol was also noticed in the early seventeenth century.8 Curiously, these writings are not mentioned by Boyle, and as Debus suggests,

The mathematical sciences of the early modern period comprised many fields of knowledge, and those such as astronomy, geography, optics, music, practical geometry, acoustics, architecture and arithmetic were often deliberately oriented towards practical applications. Between the mid-sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, practitioners of the mathematical sciences and garden and landscape designers shared the conviction that nature could be controlled and manipulated, and the methods used and the knowledge acquired in the mathematical sciences opened up new ways to do this. These potentialities affected the realm of landscape design and gardening in various formative ways that reached directly into the political sphere by offering new possibilities for political representation, of which there are numerous noteworthy examples, including the gardens of Versailles, perhaps the most magnificent representational gardens in seventeenth-century Europe.

È grazie alla modernità se possiamo oggi riscoprire la natura storica di Gesù e del cristianesimo originario. Il cristianesimo non nasce con Gesù e, quando prende forma definita, appare come una religione avversa all’ebraismo. Gesù, però, era ebreo e non voleva fondare un’altra religione.
Il libro mostra dapprima l’azione critica esercitata dalle scienze storiche moderne sulla visione del modo antiebraica creata dal cristianesimo antico. Si riscopre ad esempio la natura ebraica della Bibbia che il cristianesimo antico aveva negato cristianizzandola.
I capitoli centrali mettono in luce l’impatto della scienza moderna sul sistema teologico cristiano. Sono le concezioni politiche moderne che denunciano la deformazione politica del cristianesimo. Le dichiarazioni dei diritti dell’uomo (emerse grazie all’illuminismo) hanno avuto un impatto trasformatore positivo non solo sulle diverse forme di cristianesimo, ma anche sull’ebraismo e sull’Islam. La sterminata ricerca storica moderna su Gesù, però, non è frutto di un atteggiamento anti-cristiano, ma delle molteplici e diversificate correnti cristiane che assumono volta a volta i diversi fattori culturali della modernità.
In sostanza, ebraicità di Gesù, nascita del cristianesimo antiebraico e impatto critico della modernità sono tre aspetti inscindibili che stanno al cuore dell’interrogazione contemporanea.

Fors, Hjalmar, 2003: Mutual Favours: The social and scientific practice of eighteenth-century Swedish chemistry. Written in English. Institutionen för idé- och lärdomshistoria, Uppsala universitet, Skrifter 30. 225 pp. Uppsala.

The dissertation is a study of the creation of chemistry as a science in eighteenth-century Sweden. It is argued that the chemists in the study participated in a network for exchange of scientific facts and all kinds of favours, in which science was both conducted, negotiated and created. A number of relationships between chemists are analyzed with regards to two central eighteenth-century institutions: the patron-client relationship and the egalitarian ideal of reciprocity articulated in the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters.
In the first half the background to the success of Swedish chemistry is sketched out. It is discussed which groups supported chemistry and for what reasons. There is a discussion of the theoretical and methodological changes that were initiated by Torbern Bergman when he took over the chair of chemistry in Uppsala. Bergman's attempts to marginalize his two major opponents, Johan Gottschalk Wallerius, the previous holder of the Uppsala chair and Gustav von Engeström, the head of the Board of Mines laboratory in Stockholm, are also analyzed.
In the second half the focus shifts to the interaction of university chemistry with industry. It is shown how industrial processes gradually came to be redefined as a kind of “coarse chemistry”, a process which benefited both engineers employed at industrial installations and university chemists. The many themes explored in the study are brought together in an analysis of Carl Wilhelm Scheele’s adoption into the network of Swedish chemists. The dissertation concludes with a survey of the more general conclusions.

Key words: Sweden, chemistry, mineralogy, eighteenth century, enlightenment science, republic of letters, reciprocity, networks, Johan Gottschalk Wallerius, Torbern Bergman, Carl Wilhelm Scheele.

Hjalmar Fors, Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University, Slottet, entrance A0, S-751 37 Uppsala, Sweden.

© Hjalmar Fors 2003