Antiquity and Middle Ages

JAMES EVANS, J. LENNART BERGGREN (eds.),Geminoss Introduction to the Phenome-na: A Translation and Study of a Helleni-stic Survey of Astronomy. Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2006.XVIII+325 pp., ISBN 0-691-12339-X.

Lopera del poligrafo e filosofo di matricestoica Gemino (I secolo a.C.) fu un puntonodale nello sviluppo della trattatistica eru-dita di argomento tecnico. Il suo trattato sto-rico-critico sui fondamenti della matematicafu saccheggiato da tutti i commentatori tar-do-antichi; Proclo ne fece larghissimo usonel proprio commento al I libro degli Ele-menti. Questopera di Gemino non ci e` per-venuta, come del resto la quasi totalita` del-la sua prevedibilmente ampia produzione.Unica superstite e` una trattazione elementa-re di argomento astronomico, forse concepi-ta a scopi didattici: lIntroduzione ai Fenome-ni. Rispetto ad altre esposizioni dello stessogenere, quella di Gemino e` la piu` tecnica ela meno compromessa dal punto di vista filo-sofico; lo stile e` secco e preciso, se pur arric-chito qua e la` da citazioni letterarie, le frasibrevi e dirette, la sintassi lineare: uneccezio-ne nel panorama antico dei trattati astrono-mici (tutti daltronde ben posteriori), carat-terizzati da una ridondanza sintattica checulmina nei periodi fluviali dellAlmagestodi Tolomeo. La data di Gemino rende lasua Introduzione una fonte insostituibileper lastronomia pre-tolemaica, in un perio-do in cui limpatto di dati e modelli di prove-nienza babilonese cambio` i connotati della-stronomia greca. Tra gli argomenti per cuilIntroduzione e` una fonte primaria figuranolesposizione della teoria lunare babilonese,luso di schemi teorici basati su progressioni

aritmetiche per la determinazione della lun-ghezza di giorno e notte, i cicli lunisolari di 8e 19 anni e la struttura delle costellazioni se-condo Ipparco. Largomentazione di Gemi-no e` informata da un razionalismo illumina-to di rigore non comune: basti leggere laconfutazione dellopinione che variazionidel tempo atmosferico siano causate da leva-te e tramonti eliaci delle stelle, e non sempli-cemente indicate da questi come segni. LIn-troduzione ha una struttura semplice. Dopoalcune generalita` concernenti la sfera celestee la sua rappresentazione geometrica, Gemi-no espone le basi teoriche atte a spiegare fe-nomeni come la lunghezza variabile di giornie notti, i tempi di levata dei dodici segni, lalunghezza dei mesi, le fasi della luna, le sueeclissi e quelle di sole, il movimento dei pia-neti e delle stelle fisse. Lopera prosegue conconsiderazioni sulle differenti zone geografi-che della terra e sui segni metereologici rica-vabili dal moto delle stelle. Lultimo capitolopresenta un ciclo lunare utile per la predizio-ne di eclissi. Di particolare interesse la collo-cazione, a mo di appendice al trattato, di unparapegma, cioe` un almanacco contenenteprevisioni di fenomeni atmosferici su basicalendariali e astronomiche.

Il libro di Evans e Berggren rende un ma-gnifico servizio sia al lettore competente cheal neofita. Unamplissima introduzione pre-senta lautore e la sua produzione (esem-plare la discussione della datazione), inse-rendoli nel contesto tecnico-filosofico delperiodo, per passare poi ad unesposizionedei principali prerequisiti richiesti per lacomprensione dellIntroduzione. La tradu-zione, ammirevole per aderenza allo stiledellautore, precisione tecnica e chiarezza,e` corredata di lunghe note, che chiariscono

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tutti i dettagli tecnici. Seguono le traduzionicommentate dei due frammenti filosoficipiu` importanti di Gemino, concernenti ilprimo la classificazione delle scienze mate-matiche, il secondo i rapporti tra astrono-mia e fisica. Quattro appendici contengonorispettivamente note testuali, che offronoimportanti correzioni al testo, unanalisidel parapegma di Gemino, un glossario ditermini tecnici e un indice delle autorita`menzionate nellIntroduzione. Decine di fi-gure, diagrammi (comprese molte riprodu-zioni da manoscritti) e tavole accompagna-no il testo. Unampia bibliografia e unindice alquanto dettagliato completano ilvolume. Berggren e Evans hanno cura dispiegare ogni possibile dettaglio tecniconei termini piu` elementari possibili, guidan-do il lettore alla consultazione del libro equasi scusandosi quando argomenti di unacerta difficolta` risultano inevitabili; vienefatto talvolta ricorso a teorie astronomichemoderne per spiegare nozioni o fenomeni,ma questo non da` mai luogo ad anacroni-smi. Le concezioni astronomiche esposteda Gemino, a volte sorprendenti per il letto-re moderno o anche solo per chi conoscelastronomia tolemaica, sono esposte conchiarezza esemplare. Al lettore viene insom-ma offerta una vera e propria introduzioneallastronomia del periodo compreso tra Ip-parco e Tolomeo.

Il volume e` assai ben curato ed ha unprezzo accessibile, in linea con la politicaeditoriale assennata della casa editrice. Mi-steriosamente, gli sporadici errori di stampasi addensano nei riferimenti bibliografici.

FABIO ACERBI

JEAN A. GIVENS, KAREN M. REEDS, ALAINTOUWAIDE (eds.), Visualizing MedievalMedicine and Natural History, 1200-1550. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. XX+278 pp., ISBN 0-7546-5296-3.

Few volumes with contributions on to-pics that belong to the fields of differentdisciplines here art history, natural his-

tory, and medicine show almost consistenthigh quality and signs of a real intellectualexchange between the authors. That is thecase here, and the credit should go espe-cially to the three editors. The excellentand pleasantly short introduction makesclear that an ecumenical approach has beenfollowed with respect to the various sub-jects, construing natural history and medi-cine very broadly, and that continuity ratherthan rupture in European intellectual life ishighlighted. The barriers constructed byhistoriography between middle ages andearly modern times which find them-selves, confusingly, in different periods de-pending on the discipline in which one is in-volved thus easily loose their obstructivecharacter. Another important issue is alsotackled at an early stage: this volume isabout visualizing and visualization and notabout illustration whether scientific ornot in order to avoid confusing and ana-chronistic assumptions about relations be-tween early European texts and images.This grappling with definitions and the at-tempt to open up modern categories andmake them more sensitive to historical oneshas given the contributors the freedom toexplore such categories and consider therelationship of image, word, and medicineafresh (p. 1).

Most articles show a thorough awarenessof the extent to which historical visual stu-dies (or should we call this field historicalimagery?) have changed rapidly over thelast decade or two. Art and art historicalmethods are still enormously important.Yet, in part thanks to the interest of otherexperts in the visual cultures of the past,the range of visual objects to be studiedhas vastly expanded. As Peter Murray Jonesargues in an essay which explores the diffe-rences between illustration and other typesof visual representation, physicians calen-dars, pilgrim badges, and frescoes on hospi-tal walls can all be studied as medical ima-gery. At the same time the interest inquestions of production, reception, patro-nage, circulation and function of such visualobjects has increased. Obviously, not everyarticle in this volume tackles each of these

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topics, but the awareness of their relevanceis nearly always there. The very best essaysin this volume distinguish themselves bygreat expertise concerning the topics andmaterial discussed as well as new insightsinto various of these new topics, elevatingcase studies that are already excellent inthemselves to a level at which they have awider relevance.

My personal favourites are the three trulyinnovative essays on illuminated natural hi-story manuscripts by Cathleen Hoeniger,Alain Touwaide, and Jean Givens, andtwo essays about Leonardo da Vinci andhis circle. Of the latter, Karen Reeds looksat nature printing (using a leaf or otherparts of a plant to print with) and the expe-rimentation with techniques of depictingplants. Monica Azzolini shows there is stilla lot to investigate about Leonardos anato-mical studies and the question of where andhow he may have been personally involvedin dissections. She has a more general pointto make as well, showing how a culturallyshaped focus on Leonardo as an isolated ge-nius has kept us from considering his close-ness and similarity to his contemporaries.

In an impressive discussion of a previou-sly unstudied herbal from the late 13th orearly 14th century and its various manu-script filiations, Touwaide shows that origi-nal Byzantine plant images were copied du-ring the Latin occupation of Byzantium,combined with European texts, and resha-ped to form a handy Franco-Latin herbal.This process of transmission throws lighton Constantinopolitan sources that no lon-ger exist as well as on the process of culturaltranslation involved. Jean Givens comparestwo manuscript versions and one printedversion of the Tractatus de herbis which we-re created between 1280 and 1526. Lookingat the materials used, the nomenclature, theorganization of the text, and the relationbetween text and images in these booksabout health and plant-based medicine,she explores reading practices, the visualcuing systems which helped a reader findhis or her way, and discusses the patronsfor whom these manuscripts were possiblymade.

Cathleen Hoenigers essay, finally, isabout illuminated Tacuinum sanitatis manu-scripts from Northern Italy created duringthe period 1380-1400. She discusses bothrelations between text and images, the po-tential uses of such books based on Arabichandbooks about healthy living, and the(wealthy) patrons for whom these particu-larly richly illustrated manuscripts werecreated. In doing so the makers drew uponmany different genres, and thus inadverten-tly (?) invented a new one, also drawingnew images (some of plants in landscapes)where no previous examples were availableto be copied. Together, the pictures evokethe peaceful, orderly, and bountiful life ona well-ordered feudal estate an imagewhich, as Hoeniger points out in a finaltwist to the story, had little to do with rea-lity, given the fact that they were created ina period of warfare, famine and disease inNorthern Italy. Thus, in the last analysis, arecontextualization of the works discussedhere helps to discover yet another layer ofmeaning.

FLORIKE EGMOND

BARBARA OBRIST, La cosmologie medievale:Textes et images. I: Les fondements anti-ques. Florence: Sismel - Edizioni del Gal-luzzo, 2004. 384 pp., ISBN 88-8450-140-7.

As the subtitle suggests, this book shouldrepresent the first volume of an editorialproject focused on cosmological texts andiconography in the Middle Ages. However,no details on forthcoming volumes are men-tioned either in the book, or on the printerswebsite (www.sismel.it). Since this editorialproject would be of great interest to the his-tory of astronomy, such an uncertainty isboth intriguing and disconcerting.

Barbara Obrist appears extremely awareof the difficulties and risks she is tackingby entering the domain of Early-Medievalcosmology. In contrast to Greek and Re-naissance science, European astronomy be-tween the 5th and the 10th centuries hasbeen scarcely studied in a systematic man-

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ner. For this reason, Obrist intensivelygrounds her research on a relevant numberof manuscripts from different European li-braries. In evaluating such original sources,she considers the ancient concept of cos-mology and she focuses on a series of to-pics involving different modern disciplinessuch as geography, surveying, cartography,meteorology, astronomy and philosophy.Indeed, the sources examined in the bookrange from the description and representa-tion of the terrestrial and celestial spheresto the order of the planets and their motion,from the elements that form the differentparts of the cosmos to their mutual relation-ships and transformation.

Obrist identifies in the sources a series ofuseful guidelines for future studies and, inthe introductory chapter of the book, sheworks them into a preliminary systematiza-tion of Medieval cosmological texts and ico-nography. In general, Medieval sources canno longer be considered as the mere resultof diffused spirituality and lack of scientificcompetence. This prejudicial background typical of most studies by former scholars must be discarded in favour of an analysisthat takes into account the contextualizeddistinction between texts made for specia-list and texts made for non-specialist.Within these two domains, iconographicalcontents include diagrammatic figures ofdata with mnemonic purposes, geometricalschemes clarifying mathematical demon-strations, and realistic representations ofthe cosmos and its parts. Obrist is also ableto delineate the chronological evolution ofsuch iconographic contents.

The fact that the book should be the firstpart of a wider editorial project may justifythe following peculiarity. Whereas major at-tention is given to the ways in which certainnotions or images moved from one manu-script to another, and to the possibility toestablish their relationship with a commonoriginal source, minor attention is given tothe implications that the contents of themanuscripts and their diffusion have forthe history of science. In other words, Obr-ist prefers to examine the philological evo-lution of texts and iconography. This fact

explains why, after delineating the threemain ancient philosophical currents that in-fluenced Medieval cosmology Platonism,Aristotelism and Stoicism she concen-trates on the transmission of a few exempli-fying concepts in different manuscripts con-taining the works by Calcidius, Proclus,Isidorus of Seville, Macrobius, MartianusCapella, and others.

The only problematic point of the bookappears to be the attempt to merge textualand iconographic information with the his-tory of scientific instruments. For example,Obrist mentions the Kugels Globe (300-100 B.C.E.) as being shown in colour plate8. However, such a plate illustrates (a repli-ca of?) the Roman Globe (2nd, centuryC.E.) preserved at the Romisch-Germa-nisches Zentralmuseum of Mainz. More-over, Obrist mentions secondary sourcesabout the Antikythera mechanism up toJohn Derek De Solla Price, without consid-ering recent publications by MichaelWright and others. Nevertheless, she is ableto obtain fascinating results for the historyof ancient scientific instruments. In particu-lar, she outlines that manuscript sourcessuggest the existence and diffusion of com-plex astronomical instruments in Greekand Roman antiquity. Common armillaryspheres and globes could be accompaniedby devices similar to the Antikythera me-chanism and the planetarium of Archi-medes displaying the motion of the celes-tial bodies.

Finally, the books apparatus is well orga-nized and allows quick consultation. In ad-dition to exhaustive footnotes, the volumeincludes an extensive bibliography and sev-eral indexes of illustrations, topics, names,authors of secondary sources, and consultedmanuscripts. The book also includes manypictures of a number of the most importantmanuscripts examined.

GIORGIO STRANO

CRISTINA VIANO, La matie`re des choses. Lelivre IV des Meteorologiques dAristote

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et son interpretation par Olympiodore.Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin,2006. 409 pp., ISBN 2-7116-1828-5.

The reputation of Olympiodorus, a sixth-century Alexandrian commentator on Aris-totle and Plato, has suffered over the years;he has been deemed both unoriginal andlacking in philosophical depth. At firstglance, an analysis of his commentary onArisotles Meteorologica IV might not beconsidered the place to rehabilitate Olym-piodorus, but this is exactly what CristinaViano does in this skillfully argued volume.We are fortunate to find in Vianos worktwo interpretations, hers and Olympio-dorus, of Meteorologica IV, a treatise thatis well known among historians of ancientscience and philosophy for its discussionof the problem of mixtures and the second-ary properties of materials, its blurring ofdistinctions between the categories of thenatural and artificial, and its explanationsof the relation between hierarchies of mat-ter and of knowledge.

Vianos book succeeds on multiple levels.On a textual level, it provides a new editionof Olympiodorus commentary and the firstpublished translation of this work in a mod-ern language. Both the edition and transla-tion are of much value. On an interpretativelevel, Viano demonstrates the complexity ofOlympiodorus methods of interpretationand the relevance of Olympiodorus viewsto both the Aristotelian tradition and tocontemporary interpretations of Aristotle.

Olympiodorus was greatly concernedwith the questions of taxis and scopos, andput forth considerable effort in finding a so-lution for the place of Meteorologica IV, aquestion that had already been debatedfor centuries. He contended that the fourthbook shares a common theme with the firstthree because all four books, traditionallyincluded in the Meteorologica, discuss theaffections (pathainomena) of the elements;the first three books concentrate on theseaffections as they appear in the exhalations,composed of partially transformed ele-ments, that are the matter of meteorologicalphenomena, while Meteorologica IV exam-

ines these affections in homeomers, formedout of mixtures of the elements (pp. 92-101). Viano, stakes out her own position,calling the treatise amphibious, a digres-sion on the first three books that followsyet, potentially, can stand on its own(pp. 109-113). This account is reasonablein it recognizes that the Aristotelian corpuswas not published in a modern sense andthat our hope of finding the true order ofthe books is chimerical.

Some of the most interesting aspects ofVianos analysis come from her associationof the fourth book with the previous three.All of the books which come under the titleMeteorologica share a concern for matter,not in relation to the metaphysical conceptof prime matter, but rather with respect toconcrete manifestations of terrestrial physi-cal transformations. As a result, the termsof analysis are applied less strictly in thesefour books than in De generatione et corrup-tione, De caelo, and the Physics. For exam-ple, sea water is imprecisely called a mixture(krasis) in Meteorologica 2.3, but it truly isa juxtaposition or composite (sunthesis)(pp. 155-156). Similarly, the pores that ex-plain some of the secondary passive quali-ties in the later chapters of book four,should not be taken as pores stricto sensu,such as are rejected in the polemics againstEmpedocles in De generatione et corrup-tione, but are better interpreted, as Olym-piodorus does, as the parts of a substancethat are affected more easily (eupathesteramoria) (p. 161). Olympiodorus diagnostictheory, which used tekmeriodic proof in anovel way, also avoids metaphysics bysearching for the proximate causes for thecharacteristics of materials instead of at-tempting to explain their efficient and ma-terial causes by the unmoved mover orprime matter. Adding to the growing scho-larship on empiricism stemming from theMeteorologicas tradition, Viano concludesthat Olympiodorus theory of diagnosis ad-vocates experiential and potentially experi-mental investigations into nature, even ifthere is little evidence that Olympiodorusapplied such methods (pp. 192-194).

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The above issues are just part of Vianosscope. She also discusses distinctions be-tween art and nature, final causes (eventhough Olympiodorus comments on Me-teorologica 4.12 are disappointingly non-ex-tant), the relation of this work to alchemy,methods for interpreting Aristotle, and thesubsequent influence of this treatise. By allmeans, we can be grateful that she hasresuscitated Olympiodorus, demonstratedthat he is an able guide to Meteorologica IV,and made his commentary far more accessi-ble than ever.

CRAIG MARTIN

LEONID ZHMUD, The Origin of the History ofScience in Antiquity. Translated from theRussian by Alexander Chernoglazov. Ber-lin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006.VIII+331 pp., ISBN 10: 3-11-017966-0.

The book explores the emergence anddecline of the history of science in classicalantiquity. Due to the paucity of primarysources and the ambiguity of the extantfragments remaining, it took an extremelyaccurate and comprehensive survey of animmense variety of ancient texts to com-plete this truly remarkable piece of scholar-ship. In contrast to a common belief,Zhmud shows that since the earliest timesof their culture, Greek scholars showed akeen interest in the historical reconstructionof both the genealogy of civilization and theorigin of sciences and arts. At the begin-ning, such an interest was mainly character-ized by the quests of the heroic and mytho-logical origins of inventions which pavedthe way to the heuremamathography or ahistory of gods-inventors (Athena, Demeter,Apollo) and cultural heroes and sages (Pala-medes, Daedalus, Anacharsis, Thales) whowere often credited not only as discoverersbut also as founding fathers of scientific dis-ciplines (mathematics and astronomy) andarts (architecture). While it is difficult tosee in these reconstructions the emergenceof a truly historical interest, with the pro-gressive specialization of Greek sciences,

scholars and philosophers began to surveythe boundaries of their research field by re-constructing the historical origin of specificsets of problems. Within this framework, itwas perceived that scientific knowledge hada history and, at the same time, that such ahistory was marked by a distinctive progressof its technical notions. In this respect, thefirst work in which such an awareness be-comes apparent is the Hippocratic treatiseon ancient medicine (V century BCE)where the author ... is not only enthusiasticabout progress in investigations and discov-eries that are enriching medicine with newknowledge, but also believes medicine as awhole to be a human discovery (p. 55).The consequence of the human origins ofsciences and arts was therefore coupledwith the awareness of their progressive nat-ure. Naturally, the idea of progress whichemerged in this and later writings was farfrom our own but it nevertheless expressedan awareness that justified the cognitive va-lue of historical research. In this specific re-spect the author provides a convincing reas-sessment of the historiographical positionheld by Ludiwg Edelstein in his seminalwork The idea of progress in Classical anti-quity (1967).

The author follows in great detail theevolution of Greek historiography ofscience by taking into account the Peripate-tic historical project and the emergence ofspecialised styles such doxography and his-toriography. While with the first approachTheophrastus and Meno respectivelyauthors of a physical and a medical doxo-graphy aimed to collect a chronology ofthe opinions of past scientists in order toprovide a useful receptacle of ideas for cur-rent philosophical discussions and systema-tizations, with the historical works this tele-ological principle was no longer present andthe history of science began to have anautonomous value. The main works repre-senting the latter approach are Eudemushistories of mathematics (geometry and ar-ithmetic) and astronomy, three works ofwhich only few fragments remain and whichwere never imitated thereafter (p. 167). Theauthor examines these fragments in great

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details and is able to contextualize themboth within contemporary and latersources. This brings to conclude that likea modern historian of mathematics, Eude-mus was interested not only in the discoveryitself, but also in details of the proofs and itscorrespondence with demonstration in hisown day, in peculiarities of terminology,connections with other sciences etc. This as-pect of Eudemus works, testifying to hisconscientious approach to sources, is oneof the guarantees that he avoided introdu-cing arbitrary changes into his material un-less he had to (p. 201). Within this effort,Eudemus emphasized the progressive nat-ure of mathematical knowledge from the

early utilitarian applications of it in Egyptto the perfection of his own day.

The interest in the history of science ar-ose when Greek science was reaching itsmost glorious heights (p. 277) and at-tracted the attention of professional scien-tists, so much so that Zhmud is able to re-cognize Eudemus influence in severalcontemporary scientific works.

Despite its specialized nature, anyonewith a keen interest in the history of sciencein general will find in this book a most valu-able material. A comprehensive bibliogra-phy and a useful index conclude the vo-lume.

MARCO BERETTA

Renaissance and Early Modern Science

PATRICE BAILHACHE (ed.), Pierre Gassendi:Initiation a` la theorie de la musique oupartie speculative de la musique (Manu-ductio ad theoriam, seu partem speculati-vam musicae). Turnhout: Brepols, 2005.113 pp., ISBN 2-503-51885-0.

La Manuductio, pubblicata nel 1655 maredatta presumibilmente nel 1636 (cfr. Ini-tiation a` la theorie de la musique. Texte dela Manuductio, trad. fr. a cura di GastonGuieu, Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1992,p. 5), presenta solo lievi rielaborazioni suc-cessive a questa data, come testimonianola citazione della Musurgia Universalis diKircher (1650) e lassenza di rinvii esplicitiallHarmonie Universelle (1636-1637) e agliHarmonicorum Libri (1636, 16482) di Mer-senne. La presente traduzione, eseguitacon grande accuratezza da Patrice Bailha-che, e` preceduta da una chiara introduzionee accompagnata da un apparato di note checonsentono unagevole lettura del testo an-che a studiosi non dediti abitualmente a te-matiche musicologiche.

Questa breve Initiation non presenta ele-menti di originalita` paragonabili al Compen-

dium Musicae di Descartes o alle numeroseopere sulla musica di Mersenne, ne lasciatrasparire aspetti della riflessione filosoficadellAutore, come avviene invece nella piu`approfondita trattazione sul suono condottanel Syntagma philosophicum. Dedicata al fu-turo cardinale Cesar dEstrees e suddivisa inquattro brevi capitoli e un capitolo intro-duttivo, lopera affronta le tradizionali que-stioni delle tre proporzioni armonica, geo-metrica e aritmetica, della classificazionedelle consonanze, dei generi (diatonico, cro-matico, enarmonico) e dei modi musicali edi alcune fondamentali regole contrappunti-stiche, attingendo principalmente ai trattatidi Boezio, Guido dArezzo, Jean de Murse Gioseffo Zarlino.

A differenza dellimpostazione geometri-ca di Kepler e Descartes e di quella fisicadi Mersenne, Vincenzo e Galileo Galilei,Gassendi mantiene la tradizionale subordi-nazione della musica allaritmetica (p. 28[633 c1]) poiche il suo oggetto e` il numerocanoro e armonico, la definizione dei modimusicali avviene sulla base di precise suc-cessioni numeriche e in un canto polifonicolarmonia tra le voci dipende dal rispetto dideterminati rapporti aritmetici. La confor-

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mita` a tale classificazione delle arti del qua-drivium lo induce ad adottare il sistemadintonazione proposto dal teorico italianoZarlino: seguendo il procedimento aritmeti-co della divisione successiva degli intervallisecondo la proporzione armonica, Gassendirespinge le varie proposte di temperamentodiscusse in quegli anni e nega che gli inter-valli impiegati nelle composizioni musicalipossano essere divisi in due o piu` partiuguali (pp. 52 [641 c1] e sgg.).

Tale impostazione convive pero` con unmodo generale di distinguere gli intervalliconsonanti da quelli dissonanti proprio dellafisica acustica, la quale e` debitrice della le-zione di Mersenne con cui Gassendi condi-vide nel 1632 alcune esperienze sulla naturadel suono (Mersenne a Gassendi, 17 novem-bre 1635, CM V, p. 483). La piacevolezzadelle consonanze e` inoltre definita sulla basedella coincidenza di vibrazioni di piu` suoniche colpiscono ludito (p. 60 [643 c2]),non e` cartesianamente legata ad elementisoggettivi nei quali svolge un ruolo prima-rio la memoria ne e` espressa in termini didivisioni geometriche della corda (p. 64[644 c2]). Nonostante Gassendi non men-zioni la legge della frequenza, formulata daBeeckman e pubblicata da Mersenne negliHarmonicorum Libri e nellHarmonie Uni-verselle, e non accetti di annoverare luniso-no tra le consonanze (a cui invece il Minimoaveva dedicato oltre trenta pagine nelloperadel 1636-1637 con lintento di applicare aidibattiti trinitari quella che riteneva esserela consonanza piu` perfetta), egli esamina icorretti rapporti studiati da Mersenne e Vin-cenzo Galilei tra suono, volume delle cannedorgano, lunghezza della corda e peso adessa applicato. Gassendi discute inoltre delfenomeno della vibrazione per simpatia del-le corde, studio che aveva occupato le pagi-ne di Fracastoro, Bacon, Descartes, Beeck-man, Mersenne, Galileo, ma che solo negliultimi tre si era esteso anche allintervallodi quinta, limite che Gassendi oltrepassaconsiderando anche le rimanenti consonan-ze di quarta, terze e seste maggiori e minori.

Lultimo capitolo affronta il tema delle-thos dei modi musicali, argomento tradizio-nale ma discusso con rinnovato interesse in

seguito alla polemica suscitata da Boesset (ealla quale partecipano anche Mersenne eDescartes) circa la liceita` di trasgredire lavincolante corrispondenza di modi musicalie passioni. Anche in questo caso Gassendinon menziona tale dibattito contempora-neo, preferendo ricollegarsi implicitamentealla Politica di Aristotele, alla Repubblica ealle Leggi di Platone.

La Manuductio termina con lenunciazio-ne di alcune basilari regole compositive delcontrappunto relative allandamento dellevoci per gradi o per salti, alle successioni in-tervallari, al ricorso al principio della varie-ta`, confermando cos` che, come precisatonella dedica iniziale, lintento di Gassendie` di fornire un compendio per musicistiprincipianti.

NATACHA FABBRI

ANTONIO BARRERA-OSORIO, ExperiencingNature. The Spanish American Empireand the Early Scientific Revolution. Au-stin: The University of Texas Press,2006. XII+211 pp., ISBN 0292-70981-1.

Set within the historical period relatingto Charles V (1516-1555) and Philip II(1555-1598), Antonio Barrera-Osorios Ex-periencing Nature is a welcome addition tothe still under-investigated field of Spanishand Spanish-American history of sciencein the early modern period. Its focus onthe trans-Atlantic aspect of scientific com-munication and formation is a further posi-tive development in that it broadens outcurrent research to look beyond the localcontext and to place individual action with-in both the world of government and that ofcommerce.

Experiencing Nature aims to explore thedevelopment of the rules and practices sur-rounding the collection, organisation anddissemination of information concerningthe New World: institutions, mechanismsfor testing, and the production of knowl-edge. It also seeks to integrate the Atlanticworld into the history of science, exploringthe break with the humanist approach to

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knowledge and the rise of importance andrecognition of individual experience. Mostimportantly it endeavours to highlight theSpanish-American (although it must be saidthat it remains largely Iberian in its focus)contribution to sixteenth-century scienceby investigating the role of the House ofTrade (Casa de Contratacion) and theCouncil of Indies (Consejo de Indias). Thework is based on two main arguments re-garding the Spanish contribution to theScientific Revolution, referred to as twooverlapping stories: the development ofempirical practice through the relationshipbetween the crown and its subjects, andthe crowns attempts to institutionalisethese same practices.

Following a detailed introduction, Ex-periencing Nature is divided into five chap-ters, each of which investigates a distinct as-pect of the institutionalisation of science inthe Spanish domains. Each chapter leadsthematically into the next in an attempt toprovide an overall picture of the processesfollowed by the Crown and the key playerschosen to support the authors main argu-ments. The arguments are illustrated by anumber of case studies, and augmented bythe appendices comprising lists of instru-ments, published works and names of indi-viduals involved in the institutions in ques-tion.

Overall, this work is useful as a generalintroduction to the question of Spanish in-volvement in scientific, technological andcartographic developments in the earlymodern world. Whilst, in positive terms, itaims to cover a wide range of areas relatingthe public and the private aspects of inven-tions and the systematization of knowledge,this is also its weakness. Each chapter intro-duces the reader to ideas, institutions andindividuals that merit a much greater and,perhaps, more in-depth analysis than sucha slim volume can allow. As a result thereader is left desiring more informationand a greater connection between the con-stituent parts and the wider transatlanticcontext, especially the brief comparisonswith Portuguese and British contempor-aries. Greater attention to these areas

would, indeed, add considerable weight tothe authors claim regarding Spanish influ-ence in the early Scientific Revolution. Inhis introduction, Barrera-Osorio rightly in-dicates that most scholarly focus has fallenon the published natural histories relatingto the Americas. However, the claim that,in Experiencing Nature, these histories willbe explored within the setting of unpub-lished materials is slightly misleading asthe unpublished materials in their major-ity constitute para-literary or non-literaryexamples, i.e. institutions, maps, machineryand so forth. Where a table of twenty-fiveexamples of published works is includedin the appendices the lack of comparisonwith other nations leaves it unclear whetherthis is a large body of work to appear overthe course of a century. Furthermore, andthis is admittedly outside the remit of thework, this portrayal of a rich and variedscientific community leaves the question ofthe decline of a visible Spanish involve-ment in the international scientific worldhanging over the readers head. The lackof published accounts was an issue thatwas to concern so many Creole and Iberianscientists and thinkers just over a century la-ter. Furthermore, in order to build uponthe work of scholars such as Canizares-Es-guerra, this question in particular needs stillto be fully addressed.

Experiencing Nature is, in conclusion, awelcome addition to the rather limitednumber of English language publicationsadvancing research into the scientific as-pects of the Iberian Atlantic world. It iswritten in an accessible manner with chap-ters that lead smoothly from one aspect ofthe discussion to another. It highlights thenumber of areas that remain as rich possibi-lities for in-depth future exploration, and itis hoped that the author takes these argu-ments further in future publications.

FIONA CLARK

DOMENICO BERTOLONI MELI, Thinking withObjects: The Transformation of Mechanics

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in the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins University Press,2006. 389 pp., ISBN 0-8018-8426-8.

Mechanics can no longer be called me-chanics, Guidobaldo del Monte wrote in1577, when it is abstracted and separatedfrom machines. A little over a century la-ter, however, theorical mechanics had infact almost completely severed its roots inmachines, to become the general, abstract,and mathematical science of solid and fluidbodies in motion. The history of mechanicsover that remarkable century has been toldseveral times already, notably in Rene Du-gass La mecanique au XVIIe sie`cle (1954)and in Richard S. Westfalls Force in New-tons Physics (1971). While Dugas left it tohis readers to extract what central themesthey could from his compendious and cir-cumstantial account, Westfall told the storyof the emergence of key mechanical con-cepts inertia, mass, work, energy, and ofcourse force from the welter of confusingand conflicting alternatives.

Domenico Bertoloni Meli has taken a dif-ferent tack. Instead of tracing the origins ofthe central concepts of mechanics, an ap-proach (he claims) is particularly suscepti-ble to anachronism, he has begun with theobjects that fell under the scrutiny of me-chanical theorists, objects that presentedthem both with problems to solve and withmodels and analogues for their solutions.These objects were neither the simple ma-chines that Guidobaldo had adopted fromPappus of Alexandria to define the scopeof sixteenth-century mechanics (the lever,pulley, wheel and axel, wedge, and screw),nor the sophisticated instruments of seven-teenth-century experimental philosophy(such as the telescope, microscope, thermo-meter, barometer, and air pump). Rather,they were objects of common experience falling and colliding bodies, inclined planes,vibrating strings, pendulums, springs,beams, floating bodies, and pierced cis-terns. By approaching early-modern me-chanical thinkers from the practical objectsthey investigated, Bertoloni Meli can followtheir thinking forward in a way less prone to

anachronism than by tracing modern con-cepts backwards. At the same time, he doesnot give undue prominence to engineers orcraftsmen, as if practical experience aloneof such objects could reveal the theoreticalsecrets of mechanics. Rather, he sees theseobjects as the occasions and the chief stimu-li to mechanical thinking which is thesource of the title of the book and its mainthesis. As with Westfall, the emphasis is stillon the thinking part.

The various objects, taken up more orless chronologically, order the ten chapters,beginning with Guidobaldos attempt to re-duce all the simple machines to the balanceand Stevins brilliant solution to the inclinedplane. There follow chapters on Benedettisand Galileos early theories of floating andfalling bodies based on Archimedean hy-drostatics; Galileos new sciences of thestrength of beams and the speeds of fallingbodies; Mersennes work on vibratingstrings, Torricellis on projectiles and theflow of water from a pierced cistern, andRiccolis on the speeds of descent of variousmaterials through water and air; the rise ofthe mechanical philosophy in the theoriesof motion and impact of Galileo, Beeck-mann, Marci, and Descartes. After a briefinterlude on the historical and institutionalcircumstances of mechanics mid-century,the second group of five chapters takes upthe motion and equilibrium of fluids inthe work of Castelli, Pascal, Boyle, andothers; orbital and pendular motion in Fab-ri, Borelli, and Huygens; collision, springs,and elasticity in Boyle and Hooke; the mo-tions of planets in Halley, Wren, Hooke,and Newton; and the emergence of analyticmechanics and principles of conservation inLeibniz and Varignon. In this last chapter itbecomes clear that by the end of the cen-tury the stimulus of objects has run itscourse, giving way to more purely concep-tual and mathematical advances, such asLeibnizs distinction between quantity ofmotion and vis viva, Newtons disentan-gling of force from its pretenders, and thegeneral use of differential equations. Theconcluding chapter presents a somewhattangled map of the nexus of objects as

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a kind of summary of the mechanicalthought of the century.

The use of objects as the skeleton-keyguide to the transformation of seventeenth-century mechanics offers the singular advan-tages of a sensitivity to the conceptual andpractical difficulties faced by mechanical in-vestigators and an avoidance of the ana-chronism likely when working backwardsfrom modern ideas of force or laws of con-servation. But as Bertoloni Meli duly notes,the transformation of mechanics in the endentailed the throwing off of the tyranny ofthe lever, the balance, and the other me-chanical objects to become the abstractscience of bodies in motion governed bygeneral laws of nature a mechanics withoutmachines, a thinking without objects.

W.R. LAIRD

MARIANNE COJANNOT-LE BLANC, MARISADALAI EMILIANI, PASCAL GLATIGNY(eds.), Lartista, lopera e la sfida dellaprospettiva. Roma: Ecole Francaise deRome, 2006. 485 pp., ISBN 2-7283-0740-7.

Nel corso del Novecento si e` assistito adun risveglio dellinteresse per i temi pro-spettici ed il dibattito si e` gradualmente am-pliato per avvicinarsi, con strumenti cono-scitivi scientifici, ad ambiti applicativi delladisciplina non limitati a quello storico-arti-stico. Una testimonianza della volonta` diriassumere i progressi compiuti nel secoloappena trascorso e` fornita da questo volu-me, che contiene gli atti del convegno, tenu-tosi a Roma tra il 19 e il 21 settembre 2002,organizzato dallUniversita` di Roma La Sa-pienza, dallEcole Francaise de Rome edallAccademie de France a` Rome.

La prima sezione, sui contesti di speri-mentazione della prospettiva, si occupa ditematiche diversificate dal punto di vistadella collocazione spaziale e temporale, mache risultano tutte testimoniate dallattentoconfronto tra prove documentali e materiali(Dominique Raynaud). Si riconosce allotti-

ca ed alla sua diffusione un ruolo primarioper levoluzione duecentesca della pitturain senso illusionistico (Francesca Cecchini).Per quanto riguarda la propagazione geo-grafica della prospettiva, sono interessantigli episodi sulla sua esportazione nel Porto-gallo del Settecento, attraverso lopera delpittore fiorentino Vincenzo Bacherelli, con-giunta agli insegnamenti dei Gesuiti (MagnoMello), oltre alla quasi contemporanea in-troduzione della prospettiva in Russia (IrinaGouzevitch-Dimitri Gouzevitch). La volon-ta` di rinnovare le illustrazioni a corredo diuna nuova edizione degli Elementi di Eucli-de rivela, da parte del matematico cinque-centesco Federico Commandino, linteressenel recupero dellantica disciplina della sce-nografia, attraverso lapplicazione delle logi-che prospettiche (Alessandra Sorci).

La prospettiva pratica e` protagonista del-la seconda sezione, dove si conferma la po-tenzialita` della materia, come incontro traarte e scienza (Pascal Dubourg Glatigny).Sono oggetto di studio leredita` durerianae la volonta` di una sua semplificazione neiKunstbucher della Germania del XVI seco-lo (Jeanne Peiffer). Si esamina, inoltre, lap-plicazione della scienza prospettica alla pro-gettazione dei giardini nel Settecento(Georges Farhat) e si riconoscono alcuniepisodi significativi della letteratura pro-spettica nellambito della cultura degli inge-gneri (Hele`ne Verin). Per quanto concernela didattica, si approfondiscono interessanticapitoli sullinsegnamento della prospettivaallAccademia di San Luca tra Seicento eSettecento (Marica Marzotto) e allAcade-mie Royale de Mathematiques di Barcellona(Jorge Galindo Diaz). La creazione di stru-menti topografici, basati sulla logica proiet-tiva prospettica, permette di riconoscere leradici rinascimentali di una importante edattuale applicazione pratica del metodo dirappresentazione al disegno scientifico, in-dividuata nella determinazione delle misurereali di un soggetto, a partire dalla sua rap-presentazione in prospettiva (Filippo Came-rota).

Il dibattito sullefficacia della restituzioneprospettica e` ampiamente approfondito nel-la terza e ultima sezione del libro, dove si

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presentano esperienze e ricerche che conte-stano le semplificazioni e gli anacronismi dialcuni precedenti studi (Pietro Roccasecca);si propone, quindi, lapplicazione della teo-ria degli errori, allo scopo di conquistare lacredibilita` scientifica nei tentativi di restitu-zione prospettica applicata alla pittura (Do-minique Raynaud). Si presentano alcunenuove acquisizioni consentite dai recenti re-stauri degli affreschi di Piero della France-sca nella chiesa di San Francesco ad Arezzo(Marisa Dalai Emiliani) e le ricerche con-dotte su alcuni dipinti della National Galle-ry of Art di Londra, che svelano nuove pro-ve materiali sulle conoscenze prospettichenellItalia del Quattrocento (Pietro Rocca-secca). Si rivelano, inoltre, le applicazionidella prospettiva allideazione di alcuni alle-stimenti museografici (Paolo Martellotti) ele inedite ipotesi sulla formazione artisticadi Beato Angelico (Anna Luce Sicurezza).Sulla prospettiva secentesca, si indaga attor-no alla misteriosa ed accattivante Veduta diMariakerk a Utrecht di Pieter Saenredam(Jan Blanc) e si interpretano le caratteristi-che dellatticismo francese, alla luce dei suoilegami con la scienza prospettica (MarianneCojannot-Le Blanc).

Sono oggetto di approfondimento, inol-tre, alcune testimonianze artistiche sullaprospettiva cinquecentesca, confrontate coni contenuti dei trattati coevi (Pascal Du-bourg Glatigny) e, per concludere, si esami-na il dibattito critico e ideologico sulla pro-spettiva a seguito della pubblicazione dellatraduzione italiana del 1961 del testo dellaProspettiva come forma simbolica di ErwinPanofsky del 1924 (Maria Mignini).

E` proprio il testo di Panofsky che e` indi-viduato come origine del frequentato dibat-tito novecentesco sulla prospettiva, ma an-che come limite circa loggetto degli studicritici, che non potevano ormai limitarsi alladiscussione sul valore simbolico di questometodo di rappresentazione della realta` tri-dimensionale. La prospettiva dei pittori, de-gli scultori e degli architetti si riconosce,quindi, come strumento di indagine e cono-scenza, il cui appannaggio e` esteso agli inge-gneri e agli scienziati. Si allargano, infine, gliorizzonti geografici e temporali, che rendo-

no la prospettiva un fenomeno non limitatoal territorio italiano o al solo periodo rina-scimentale che, pur significativo, non costi-tuisce inizio o termine di un fenomeno dicos` estesa portata culturale.

CRISTINA CA`NDITO

ALIX COOPER, Inventing the Indigenous. Lo-cal Knowledge and Natural History inEarly Modern Europe. Cambridge andNew York: Cambridge University Press,2007. 218 pp., ISBN 978-0-521-87087-0.

Local knowledge concerning nature isusually taken to be the knowledge that theinhabitants of a certain place or region haveof their natural surroundings. The term re-fers especially to practical knowledge basedon experience and tradition rather than onlearned publications or formal education.That is not what this book is about, however,and the topic arises only briefly in a shortsection at the beginning of Chapter 5, whichactually deals with the (contrasting) attitudesof two famous European scientists theSwiss Scheuchzer and the Swede Linnaeus towards local knowledge. The three corechapters of the book concern, in fact, a dif-ferent topic: the birth and evolution (fromthe early seventeenth century onwards) ofcertain genres of publications about nature,in which locality plays an important part:the local flora with its lists of plants; regionalmineralogical treatises; and the natural his-tory of a territory. Such publications were al-most exclusively produced by men with auniversity (often medical) training, quite afew of whom did not come from the regionthey described. It is thus not by chance thatnearly all of the longer case studies in thisbook concern famous naturalists/scientistsor physicians, such as Paracelsus, Scheuch-zer, Linnaeus, and Oldenburg. Some inter-esting topics do emerge in these chapters:the different styles of natural history writingthat developed in Germany and England;links between the emergence of the genreof the local flora in Germany, with its em-

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phasis on locality and local roots (of bothpeople and plants), and the intense politi-cal/territorial fragmentation of the Germanempire and the concomitant large numberof educational institutions.

Yet, if this book was actually meant as astudy of locality and genres of natural his-tory writing, more than the title has gonewrong. It is amazing, for instance, that a dis-cussion of the person who may be regardedas the inventor of the regional/national florais lacking. The name of perhaps the most fa-mous botanist before Linnaeus, CarolusClusius, occurs only once and is missingfrom the index. In 1576 Clusius publishedwhat is regarded as the first territorially-based European flora, on the Iberian penin-sula, written in Latin for a learned and defi-nitely non-local public. This work is soimportant for Spanish botany that anannotated Spanish translation was pub-lished recently (2005). Clusius also pub-lished the first reports on Hungarian plantsand fungi, which were likewise based onfieldwork and information from local inha-bitants. The fact that Clusius and severalof his 16th-century fellow botanists (whopublished herbals and printed botanical en-cyclopaedias) included both European andnon-European plants in many of theirworks may have clashed too much with thisbooks emphasis on indigeneity. Perhaps forsimilar reasons the author has not managedto come to terms with the widespread phe-nomenon of the natural history collection inthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.These collections too presented a globalworld and not a local one: they were (touse another term which frequently occursin this book) inclusive.

In fact, this book deals seriously withneither local knowledge (as most people un-derstand it) nor inventing the indigenous.The fact that sixteenth-century botanicalencyclopaedias distinguished between Eur-opean and non-European plant species isnot sufficient to justify speaking of an idiomof indigeneity unless that distinction coin-cides with statements of fear or hatred offoreign plants (and plant-based drugs) orof extreme praise of the indigenous. Such

statements can indeed be found, and athread linking botanical nationalism withpolitical philosophies such as cameralism discussed in an excellent way for Linnaeusby Lisbet Koerner forms one of the moreinteresting topics in this book. But it neverbecomes a main theme which could havehelped to hold together the various chap-ters. The use of the term indigeneity is,moreover, problematic in itself. Even if anearly modern European author did com-pare European and non-European indigen-ous, it does not follow that indigeneitywas a crucial concept in Early Modern Eur-ope. Its use as such here painfully contrastswith the authors announcement (p. 20) thatshe will use mainly the actors categories.

This book thus seems to be the resultof great conceptual confusion: it hoversaround various interesting topics withoutever managing to get a consistent argumentgoing. It overstates its claims and pretendsto cover a much vaster domain than it actu-ally does. Europe in this book means Ger-many and Switzerland, with brief excur-sions to examples from England, theNetherlands and Sweden. Generalizingstatements too often rest on a few case stu-dies. And the introduction in particular suf-fers from the authors tendency to put anicing of academic jargon that is (or was)fashionable in the United States on a con-tent which does not really support thoseconcepts. Some of the blame here shouldgo to Cambridge University Press, however.The editing has been sloppy: some phrasesare literally repeated (for instance pp. 19and 22), and several paragraphs are redun-dant. Let us hope that local Europeanknowledge of nature will eventually getthe treatment it deserves.

FLORIKE EGMOND

ALLEN G. DEBUS, The Chemical Promise.Experiment and Mysticism in the Chemi-cal Philosophy: 1550-1800. SagamoreBeach: Science History Publication/Wat-

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son Publishing International, 2006. XXV+548 pp., ISBN 0-88135-296-9.

This is a collection of twenty-six essaysalready published, except for two, in a vari-ety of journals and learned volumes be-tween 1960 and 1998. As such it forms acompanion volume to the Variorum vo-lume, Chemistry, Alchemy and the New Phi-losophy 1500-1700, published by Ashgatetwenty years ago, which brought togetherfourteen previously published papers byDebus. Both volumes deal with chemistryand medicine in the early modern period.

Considering that Allen Debus has pub-lished widely in a variety of journals and vo-lumes in many different countries and lan-guages, a collection like the present is ofconsiderable value to scholars working inthis field.

Rather than arranging the essays inchronological order from the sixteenth tothe eighteenth century, Debus has chosento present them topically All in all thisworks well and makes it possible for Debusto use his reprinted article on alchemy fromDictionary of the History of Ideas (1973) as afirst chapter in the books short section onthe Alchemical Background, while hiswide-ranging Distinguished Lecture fromthe 1996 meeting of the History of ScienceSociety in Atlanta provides a stimulating in-troduction to the whole volume.

Bearing in mind that some of the essaysincluded in this volume are nearly fifty yearsold, they are far from being past their sell bydate in either style or content, and they de-monstrate the value and durability of meti-culous and well-researched scholarship.Apart from the two chapters on the alchem-ical background, this volume offers sixchapters on the chemical philosophy, noless than thirteen chapters on chemistryand medicine in their national settings,and finally four essays on the eighteenthcentury and the chemical revolution.

For scholars interested in this field anumber of the essays reprinted here will al-ready be familiar, especially those publishedin the more mainstream journals, but somethey are unlikely to have encountered be-

fore, such as Chemical Medicine in EarlyModern Europe which appears here forthe first time in English. Other essays havebeen difficult to get hold of because theyhad appeared in collections which werepublished in relatively small print-runs andhave been out of print for decades. Person-ally I am glad to find Debuss excellent ar-ticle about the moderate Paracelsians,Guintherius, Libavius and Sennert: TheChemical Compromise in Early ModernMedicine in this volume, which originallyappeared in the festschrift he edited forWalter Pagel in 1972.

In the books dominant section on chem-istry and medicine in their national settingsthe majority of the essays are concernedwith England. No less than eight chaptersare dedicated to English physicians andchemists concerned with some aspect ofParacelsianism. They cover characters as di-verse as the Elizabethan magus, John Dee,seventeenth-century scholars and physicianssuch as Noah Biggs and John Woodall, notto mention John Sherley and Edward Jor-dan, concluding with Ebenezer Sibly, whowas active in the second half of the eight-eenth century. This section concludes withtwo chapters on alchemy in eighteenth cen-tury France and one on iatrochemistry ineighteenth century Portugal, which does lit-tle to change the overall Anglo-Saxon fla-vour of the whole volume.

For scholars interested in this field thevolume offers easy access to a considerablenumber of Allen Debuss essays and arti-cles, many of which remain essential read-ing for anyone working in history of earlymodern medicine and iatrochemistry.

OLE PETER GRELL

VINCENT JULLIEN, Philosophie naturelle etgeometrie au XVIIe sie`cle. Paris: HonoreChampion, Paris, 2006. 477 pp., ISBN2-7453-1363-0.

The author of this book has already pub-lished many essays and books on seven-

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teenth-century history of science, dealing inparticular with Roberval, Pascal and Des-cartes. This time he has decided to collectin one volume several papers, which pre-viously appeared in different reviews, andhave been partly revised.

The volume is divided into two parts: thefirst part, entitled Philosophie naturelle,consists of the following chapters: La que-relle du vide; Le chemin de la lumie`re chezNewton et Leibniz; La lumie`re de lecole aulaboratoire; Silences cosmologiques; Rober-val, syste`me du monde et autres controverses;La theorie de la connaissance de Roberval.The second part, Mathematiques et philoso-phie, includes: Quelques aspects du caracte`reincontournable des Elements dEuclide auXVIIe sie`cle; Les frontie`res dans les mathe-matiques cartesiennes; Chez Descartes lintui-tion est a` la deduction comme la geometrieest a` lalge`bre; Essai dinterpretation dunpassage des Anatomica de Descartes; Les in-divisibles de Roberval, une petite diffe-rence de doctrine; Descartes-Roberval. Unerelation tumultueuse.

A simple look at the titles of the chaptersshows that the contents of the volume dealwith a wide range of topics. Consequentlythe unity of the volume is to be found morein the methodology the author proposesrather than in the strict interrelation of thesubjects. The Introduction asserts this unity:the author briefly discusses the concept ofscientific revolution, usually related tothe radical changes which occurred in thehistorical period considered in the volume,and clarifies his position in regard to thenever ending debate about internalismand externalism. He wisely observes thatil y a` deja` tant a` faire lorsquon se fixe pourbut modeste peut etre aux yeux de cer-tains de comprendre les doctrines scienti-fiques, de saisir les liaisons des argumentavances, de reperer les racines philosophi-ques qui les nourrissent, que lexamen desconditions historiques et sociales de leurproduction mapparait comme une tacheannexe, qui depasse mes competences etdemeure un peu en dehors a` lexterieur de mes motivations (pp. 26-27).

The character of the volume does not al-low a discussion of all its contents. I willconcentrate on some special topics.

Roberval (un savant meconnu, in the dis-tinctive title of an old book by Leon Auger)receives special attention in this volume.His Aristarque, notoriously mocked by Des-cartes, is the object of an attentive reading.The lege`rete and the qualitative nature ofthis book are compared with other books ofthe same type, particularly Descartes Prin-cipia that se placent au meme niveau detechnicite (p. 193). The structure of Ro-bervals book reflects le choix dun savantau fait des aspects quantitatifs et observa-tionnelles les plus recents (ibid.), butavoids any technicality in order to addressa large audience.

The plea for a better consideration of theexceptional mathematical results obtainedby Roberval is also evident in the chapterdevoted to a deep analysis of his doctrineof indivisibles. Once again the great accom-plishments he obtained were overshadowedby the great figure of his contemporary,Descartes, with his neat refusal (at least inprinciple) of infinitesimal methods.

The last chapter of the book, devoted tothe personal relations between Descartes etRoberval, opens with this statement: Si cevolume etait un roman, on devrait y recon-natre deux heros principaux, Descartes etRoberval (p. 439). Actually, their beha-viour, sometimes respectful, sometimes op-posed, sometimes even convivial (p. 441),beyond the biographical details, is a naturalkey to highlight their scientific ideas. Bothmen were proud and touchy, but when theyreacted one against the other, the ground ofthe question was the dialectics between pro-found ideas destined to promote the extra-ordinary scientific development of the se-venteenth century.

The querelle du vide, described in thechapter that opens the book sees as prota-gonists the same heroes and, amongstothers, Pascal. This chapter, in which physi-cal experiments are described mixed withcontrasting philosophical and metaphysicalideas, cannot be summarized in few words,but it is a worthy reading as are also the fol-

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lowing two chapters, devoted to light andthe investigations on its nature. This timethe protagonists are other giants: Newton,Leibniz and Huygens.

The chapters of the volume specificallydevoted to Descartes, while deserving care-ful reading, for the most part contain sub-jects on which the author has just previouslyhad the occasion to express the bulk of hisideas.

MASSIMO GALUZZI

LAUREN KASSELL, Medicine and Magic in Eli-zabethan London. Simon Forman: Astrolo-ger, Alchemist, and Physician. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2005. XVIII+281pp., ISBN 0-19-927905-5 2005.

Simon Forman, the astrologer physicianof Elizabethan London, has received a re-markable amount of attention from histor-ians. Already in the nineteenth centuryJ.O. Halliwell edited some of Formansmanuscripts. In 1974, A.L. Rowse gave spe-cial attention to Formans sexual exploits,and just before the publication of the pre-sent volume, Barbara Howard TraistersThe Notorious Astrological Physician of Lon-don: Works and Days of Simon Forman(Chicago, 2001) provided the most coher-ent portrait of Forman to date. It mightbe said that the amount of attention paidto Forman rather exceeds his significancefor the history of science, yet the cause liesto large extent in the vast and remarkableassemblage of papers, notes, work-diaries,and unpublished (often unfinished) trea-tises that survive from him. We owe this ar-chival richness not only to Formans almostobsessive use of pen and ink (and his per-haps rather self-obsessed personality) butalso to the collecting fervor of the antiquar-ian Elias Ashmole who acquired and pre-served Formans papers.

Lauren Kassells book is the most recentcontribution to the mass of writings aboutSimon Forman. The author leads the readerthrough examples of the various sorts ofdocuments found among of Formans rich

manuscripts, working to display throughthem the man, his activities, and his contextin Elizabethan London. We hear fascinatingdetails of his long-term feud with the RoyalCollege of Physicians, the body attemptingto control the practice of medicine in Lon-don through licensing. Accounts of For-mans multiple attempts to fashion and refa-shion himself in various ways (dependingon the time and his immediate concerns)is of great interest and potentially a valuablelesson to all who rely on manuscript materi-als. Sections of the book dealing with For-mans dreams and his interpretations ofthem, and how he routinely and repeatedlycast horoscopes for answering virtuallyevery question he or his clients faced arestriking and highly illuminating. We aretreated likewise to a glimpse of how For-man interacted with his patients, and whohis patients and visitors actually were.(The minimal reference to Formans notor-ious sexual liaisons with patients and othersin the chapter dealing with gender is slightlypuzzling, however.) The statistical analysesof Formans patients Kassell draws fromthe manuscripts are very revealing and valu-able, and among some of the most impor-tant and useful features of her book.

One of the challenges of dealing with aNachlass like Formans is how to organize,wield, and present it as a historically reveal-ing resource. It is easy to be swallowed up bythe sheer mass of documentation. Thus dis-cernment on the part of the historian isneeded to avoid his accounts from slippinginto a descriptive miscellany. In Formanscase particularly, historical analysis andbroad contextualization is required to pre-vent Formans own rather solipsistic per-spective from being carried over into histor-ical accounts of him. Kassells book does tosome extent recapitulate these features ofthe archive, for the books organizationand narrative is rather loose and fragmented;readers will get more out of Kassells study ifthey first get their bearings by reading Trais-ters better organized account. One may alsobe led to forget that there was a much largerElizabethan world outside of Formans ownperceptions. Kassells claim that Forman

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produced one of the most comprehensivearchives of information about medicine, as-trology, alchemy, and magic in early modernEngland (p. 3) is only partly true. Thecache of manuscripts is remarkably compre-hensive, but only from Formans viewpoint,not from that of Elizabethan London. For-mans views are decidedly idiosyncratic andwhat we learn from him is, obviously, heavilyslanted towards the so-called popular.Thus Formans papers provide a remarkablyrich view of Forman himself, but it remainsthe historians task to determine, analyze,and argue how this view relates to the widercontext of the time. One can in fact discoveronly a narrow slice of the general state andcontent of medical and alchemical thoughtin England ca. 1600 from Formans writingsand practices. The crucial distinction herelies between how Forman saw and presentedhimself and how the historian is obliged toanalyze and contextualize him for the sakeof our greater historical understanding.

LAWRENCE M. PRINCIPE

WILHELM KUHLMANN, JOACHIM TELLE(eds.), Der Fruhparacelsismus. ZweiterTeil. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag,2004. XII+1090 pp., ISBN 3484365897.

The Paracelsians, followers of Theo-phrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, calledParacelsus (1493/4-1541), were immenselysignificant within the realms of 16th- and17th-century natural philosophy and medi-cine. Nevertheless, despite a number of illu-minating studies by such scholars as WalterPagel and Allen Debus, these numerousiconoclasts, best known for pioneering ia-trochemistry (chemical medicine) and offer-ing a forceful alternative to the universitycurriculum steeped in the doctrines of Aris-totle and Galen, have been marginalized inthe grand narratives of early modern intel-lectual and cultural history. Addressing thisproblem which includes a dearth of well-edited and accessible writings by Paracel-sus early followers Wilhelm Kuhlmann

and Joachim Telle have brought rich newinsights into the Paracelsians, and earlymodern thought and culture in general,with the Corpus Paracelsisticum, VolumeII, in which 55 early modern German andLatin texts by significant Paracelsians arepresented with the highest standard of phi-lology and erudite commentary.

The volumes texts are by early Paracelsusvotaries Michael Toxites, Georg Fedro, Mar-cus Ambrosius, Laurentius Span von Spa-nau, Balthasar Floter, Gallus Etschenreutter,Bartholomaus Scultetus, Pietro Perna (threeof whose writings are edited by Carlos Gilly),Gerhard Dorn, and Johann Albrecht. Mi-chael Schutz, called Toxites (ca. 1515-1581), dominates the volume, and this isthe most complete coverage of Toxites todate. (See, for example, the salient autobio-graphical information in text no. 58). Priorto the CP, the outdated and questionable1888 biography by C. Schmidt had been per-haps the most detailed account of this princi-pal Paracelsian, who was not only a cham-pion of alchemical/Paracelsian medicine,but also a prolific editor, publishing 30 ofParacelsus works, second only to Adamvon Bodenstein (1528-1577), whose produc-tion numbered 43. The editors also includenine writings by the preeminent Paracelsianspokesmen Dorn, who presented Paracel-sianism as a Christian alternative to thepaganism of school medicine Dornschemical philosophy features conceptsadopted from the Hermetic corpus and apresentation of the Genesis creation storyin terms of chemical processes.

Indeed, the texts of the CP showcase theParacelsian synthesis of Hermetic andesoteric traditions and religious novelty.This is clear in the Paracelsians embraceof Paracelsus alchemically prepared newmedicine, which they considered to be di-vine, pure, and grounded in experience Balthasar Floter even calls Paracelsus theMonarcha Medicorum (king of physi-cians). The editors rightly identify such cel-ebration as a cultish-religious portrait ofParacelsus (p. 671). Witness too textno. 77, Floter an Georg Fugger in 1567(discussed by the editors in their introduc-

11

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tory section on the heretical tendencies andalliances of the Paracelsians, p. 28), whereinit is clear that Paracelsus became regardedamong his followers not as a new Luther,but rather as a dreimalgroer German an allusion to Hermes Trismegistus. Actu-ally, in the CP one can trace Paracelsianismas it became more and more linked with adiverse variety of esoteric traditions, suchas Neoplatonism and Cabbalism, and inan inter-confessional context that includedthe tolerance and/or adoption of radicaltheological notions, e.g., those of CasparSchwenckfeld. An example of a radicaltheological dimension is text no. 48 fromToxites 1571 edition of Paracelsus mag-num opus, Astronomia Magna, in whichToxites discusses Paracelsus exceptionallyidiosyncratic and heretical biblical exegesis,and summarizes Paracelsus unique soterio-logical system in which the mortal body ofhumans (comprised of elemental and side-real matter) is destined for eternal destruc-tion with all other elemental and siderealcorporeality. To provide for the resurrec-tion body of Christians, Christ in thenew creation created a new body,which is received in baptism and nourishedby the eucharist. As Paracelsus elaborates inthe Astronomia Magna, both the eucharistand resurrection body possess the samesubtle material as the body of Christ, whoseflesh is unlike the mortal flesh of humans.Reading Toxites, one wonders about the ex-tent to which the Paracelsians sought tohide their heretical tendencies. This is onlyone of the many questions that scholars willface when analyzing and interpreting thewealth of material in the CP.

The second volume of the Corpus Para-celsisticum is a veritable goldmine. It is acollection of richly edited texts accompa-nied by an enlightening introduction andadroit commentary. The volume is a tre-mendously significant contribution that willserve scholars well in their efforts to under-stand early Paracelsianism and better graspthe scientific, philosophical, medical, eso-teric, and religious milieu of the early Scien-tific Revolution.

DANE T. DANIEL

KATHLEEN P. LONG, Hermaphrodites in Re-naissance Europe: Women and Gender inthe Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ash-gate, 2006. X+268 pp., ISBN 0-75465609 8.

The figure of the hermaphrodite offers acluster of attributes that range from thephysical to the metaphysical, posing medi-cal, legal, and philosophical issues that mustbe defined and confronted anew in the dis-cursive terms available at any particulartime and place; this makes it an ideal objectfor interdisciplinary studies. Kathleen Longoffers a series of 8 essays (four of whichhave been published in previous versions)on this theme which appear to have beenwritten mainly in the 1990s and then some-what awkwardly connected into a book forAshgates series Women and Gender in theEarly Modern World. They focus on the rolehermaphroditic bodies played in the cul-ture wars of sixteenth-century France, atime of crises summarized in the introduc-tion as: the discovery of new world cultures;the Reformation and its attendant violentstruggles; the consolidation of royal powerat the expense of traditional feudalism;and the rise of empirical science, along witha valorization of clinical practice over book-ish learning. Each chapter centers around adifferent textual genre and explores the sig-nificance of the hermaphrodite in differentaspects of society, as reflected in the medi-cal treatises of Ambroise Pare, Caspar Bau-hin, and Jacques Duval, the philosophicalalchemy works of Clovis Hesteau de Nuyse-ment, lyric poetry by Theodore AgrippaDAubigne, political pamphlets, and a sati-rical novel by Thomas Artus (Descriptionde lIsle des Hermaphrodites, ca. 1598).

What unites this choice of texts, saysLong, is the profoundly conservative yetprofoundly revolutionary effect that thisparadoxical figure engenders: by unitingthe fundamental division of the sexes intoone, the hermaphrodite both calls intoquestion natural boundaries betweenmale/female, active/passive, governing/ru-led, while at the same time reasserting theirnecessary opposition. By doing so, the her-

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maphrodite lends itself to representing allstruggles between stridently opposingforces. Depending on its use and context,it may consequently appear as the evil tobe eliminated in order to re-establish socialor natural orders in a state of crisis (as is thecase of the political pamphlets condemningthe royal hermaphrodite Henri III ofFrance) as easily as it may suggest an open-ing to creative synthesis and rebirth basedon new configurations of the genderedpoles (as the figure appears in the lyric po-etry of the poets belonging to his court).

The fluidity of exchange between maleand female in alchemical works by Paracel-sus, like the difficulty of establishing a sin-gle gender for some individuals with partial-ly developed genitalia of both sexes,implicitly called into question the natural-ness of the binary opposition. This thesisis clearly worked out in the legal case of Ma-rin LeMarcis who was saved from beingburned alive thanks to Jacques Duvals em-pirical observations, in direct opposition tothe opinion of the other medical expertswho were called to testify, based on distantvisual clues suggested by ancient sources ra-ther than on tactile evidence (a case discus-sed by Michel Foucault in his Les Anor-maux lectures given in 1974). By revealingthe inadequacy of the two-sex model whenfaced with a real intersexual body, thehermaphrodite pointed to the imaginarynature of the sexes, to the cultural, arbitrarydimension of sexual designation in itself.This is its intrinsically revolutionary effect.What these texts ultimately have in com-mon, then, explains Long, is that they usewords, images, and categories to demon-strate the resistance of the body to significa-tion and in order to subvert the politics ofinterpretation: the gap between theory andreality demonstrates the inefficacy of theo-retical discourse (p. 23).

What better theoretical discourse to usefor analyzing the historical hermaphroditethan contemporary gender theory, then?Ideally, according to this logic, a study ofhermaphrodites in Renaissance Europeshould serve to reflect back on the postmo-dern gender theories that the author is pro-

posing, in the same way the texts of the pastserve to illuminate the gender theories ofthe sixteenth-century authors being exami-ned. Unfortunately, this ideal is not fulfilledin Longs exposition: the theoretical appa-ratus and basic definitions of the key termsshe employs, such as gender, are scarcelyalluded to, apart from occasional citationsfrom Judith Lorbers Paradoxes of Gender(1994), Judith Butlers Gender Trouble(1990), and Donna Harraways Cyborgs, Si-mians, and Women (1989), all of whichspeak for a previous scholarly generationthat came to the forefront in the Anglo-Sa-xon world during the socio-political crisis offeminism.

The outdatedness of Longs interpretativediscourse does not respond to our needs fora renewed understanding of hermaphroditesin our liquid, fluid, artificially natural pos-thuman era. The lack of a fully developedsense of historicization and historical metho-dology also undermines the interdisciplinaryaims of the study: it is neither theoreticallyadventurous nor historically rigorous, thusremaining of interest primarily to literaryscholars of sixteenth-century France.

ZAKIYA HANAFI

AD MESKENS, Joannes della Faille S.J.: Ma-thematics, Modesty, Missed Opportuni-ties. Brussels and Rome: Istituto StoricoBelga di Roma (Commercial distributionBrepols Publishers), 2005. 177 pp., ISBN90-74461-53-0.

In his partially successful struggle to se-cure mathematics a prominent place in theJesuit curriculum, Christoph Clavius, pro-fessor of mathematics at the Collegio Roma-no from 1565 to 1612, particularly insistedon the utility of the discipline. The bookby Ad Meskens, which is devoted to theFlemish Jesuit Joannes della Faille (1597-1652), provides us with a vivid example ofthe variety of intellectual and practical tasksto which a seventeenth-century mathemati-cian could be called.

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Born into a wealthy family of Antwerp asthe first of twelve children, Joannes becamea novice at the Mechlin Jesuit seminar in1613. He subsequently studied at the newlyopened school of mathematics at Antwerp,where he was a pupil of Gregorio a SanctoVincentio. After a few years of teaching atthe Jesuit colleges of Dole and Louvain, hebecame in 1629 professor at Madrids Impe-rial College. In 1637 della Faille was appoin-ted first cosmographer to the Council of theIndies, with the task of compiling astrono-mical tables, navigational routes and geogra-phical maps, and from 1639 was also askedto teach fortification. In 1641, King PhilipIV of Spain made him military adviser tothe Duke of Alba, and in 1646 appointedhim as tutor of his legitimized son, Don Juanof Austria, whom della Faille accompaniedon numerous military expeditions. In 1650della Faille followed Don Juan to Barcelona,where he died in November 1652. Duringhis eventful life, he published only onebook, the De centro gravitatis (1632), but ac-cording to Sancto Vincentio he wrote as ma-ny as 30 treatises, some of which have beenretraced by Ad Meskens in the archives ofthe della Faille family.

Ad Meskens book consists of six chap-ters, of which the first three reconstructthe story of the rich family della Faille andnarrate Joannes eventful life against thebackground of religious and political con-flicts. The story Meskens tells is indeedone of Mathematics, modesty and missed op-portunities, as the subtitle states. Della Fail-le is described as a passionate mathemati-cian, but also as a devout man who,according to the Societys rules, lived inmodesty, humility and self-abnegation,(p. 63) sacrificing individual glory for theglory of the order. His life was also charac-terized by moments of frustration: His acti-vity as a cosmographer of the Council of theIndies was not very successful (pp. 54-55);he was disappointed by the officers of theSpanish army who knew nothing about for-tification; as a military adviser to the Dukeof Alba he felt totally useless (p. 57); andDon Juan never reciprocated Joannes reve-rence for him (p. 125).

But Ad Meskens seems to believe thatthe most important opportunity della Faillemissed was that of becoming a renownedmathematician. In chapters 4 to 6 Meskensanalyses della Failles manuscript and pub-lished work, coming to the conclusion thatas a mathematician Joannes was probablyon a par with Desargues and Pascal, butthat due to his modest character and tothe lack of contacts with contemporarymathematicians, he did not gain the reputa-tion he deserved.

According to Ad Meskens, della Faillewould deserve a prominent place in the his-tory of mathematics, because he made im-portant advancements in the theory of conicsections and even preceded Braikenridge inthe formulation of an important theorem,which is a special case of Pascals MysticHexagram Theorem. Given that della Fail-les manuscripts only give theorems with-out proofs, (p. 83) Ad Meskens is con-strained to invent his own proofs, whichhe deliberately formulates in a anachronisticlanguage. Although being convinced thatdella Faille proved these theorems by purelysynthetic geometrical methods, (p. 104)faced with the impossibility of reconstruct-ing how he proceeded, Meskens hasdecided to make use of analytic geometry.

Such an approach makes it difficult forthe reader to assess the value of della Fail-les work, all the more because Meskensseems to have a very slender textual basisfor his speculations. At p. 124, he maintainsthat della Faille must have used some kindof projective geometry, because this wasthe only way to prove theorems on generalconic sections. But if one goes back to p.87, one reads that the manuscript doesnot contain any proof, which leaves us withthe question whether della Faille was able toprove these theorems for a general conicsection, or whether he proved them foreach conic section in turn.

Although the book is based on accuratearchival research and contains useful infor-mation, the reader is left with the impres-sion that Meskens cedes too much to thetentation of writing about a Spanish math-ematical tradition that could have been, notone that was (p. 123).

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It also seems that the book has not beencarefully proofread. There are quite a fewtypos, some sentences are unintelligible(e.g., p. 108: Equilibrium is explained bythe position of the weights on the leverand consequently the positions of theweights on the lever), and della Faille isonce said to have died in 1652 (p. 62) andonce in 1651 (p. 123).

CARLA RITA PALMERINO

WILLIAM R. NEWMAN, LAWRENCE M. PRIN-CIPE (eds.), George Starkey: Alchemical la-boratory notebooks and correspondence.Chicago: The University of Chicagopress, 2004. XXXVI+352 pp., ISBN0226577015.

George Starkey (1628-1665) was born inBermuda, graduated at Harvard, and in1650 settled in London, where he suddenlyimpressed his friends and correspondentsfor his chemical skills, and for his extraor-dinary knowledge of Jan Baptista van Hel-monts works. Starkey published a numberof chemical and medical tracts and alsowrote several highly influential alchemicalworks that circulated under the name ofEirenaeus Philalethes. He became a mem-ber of the Hartlib Circle, practiced medi-cine, sold his chemical remedies, and diedin the Great Plague of London, having con-tracted the plague while treating the victimsof the disease. It was through Robert Child(a correspondent of Samuel Hartlib) thatStarkey met Boyle at the beginning of1651. Since 1651, Boyle and Starkey colla-borated and corresponded on chemicaland medical themes. Their collaborationended in 1653, when Boyle went to Ireland.In 1653 Starkey was to debtors prisontwice and in 1654 Hartlib described himas altogether degenerated. With BoyleStarkey worked at producing the Alkahest(i.e., van Helmonts universal solvent), thephilosophers stone and ens veneris a cop-per compound they believed to be an effica-cious medicine. The collaboration with Ro-

bert Boyle, which is thoroughly investigatedby Newman and Principe in Alchemy Triedin the Fire (Chicago, 2002), is the core ofthe present book, containing Starkeys ex-tant laboratory notes and letters to Boyle(1651-1652) already published in the firstvolume of The Correspondence of RobertBoyle (London 2001) as well as letters toSamuel Hartlib and to some of his associ-ates, namely, John Winthrop Jr,, FrederickClodius and Jan Moriaen. The first docu-ment is a letter to John Winthrop Jr, dated1648, testifying to Starkeys early chemicalinvestigations while he was in New Eng-land, the last document (dated 1663) beinga set of three letters Starkey wrote to hisfriend Philip Frith of Rye, bearing fresh evi-dence of Starkeys medical practice. La-boratory notebooks, covering a period from1651 to 1660, contain a valuable account ofStarkeys alchemical experimental investiga-tions aimed to produce chymical arcana,namely the philosophers stone, the philoso-phical mercury, the alkahest, the volatilisa-tion of alkalies. As the editors point out(p. XIV), the extant notebooks (which repre-sent a small fraction of the originals) showthat Starkey spent more time in the pre-paration of chemical remedies and distilledoils than he did in his alchemical pursuits.This does not mean that alchemy played amarginal part in Starkeys laboratory work,since, as the editors maintain (p. XVII), thismight be the effect of selective preserva-tion of the notebooks... accentuated by thegreater interest that later collectors wouldhave had in notebooks containing such pro-cesses [i.e. the preparation of the philoso-phers stone]. Though the extant docu-ments provide important information onStarkeys laboratory work and testify to hischemical skills, we must be cautious beforecoming to conclusions about the role heplayed in Boyles chemical research. In Al-chemy Tried in the Fire (which is a compa-nion to the present book) the editorsclaimed that when Starkey met Boyle, theformer was a skilled chemist, while the lat-ter was a newcomer not only to chymistryand experimental philosophy, but to realmof learning as well (p. 222). But Starkeys

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extant correspondence with Boyle does notsupport such a claim, and Boyles early let-ters (notably those of 1648) bear evidencethat he started his chemical investigationsbefore meeting Starkey. In addition, Star-keys surviving letters is only a small portionof their correspondence, as most of the let-ters Starkey wrote weekly to Boyle are lost,as are Boyles numerous letters to Starkey.

Besides writing a general introduction tothe entire collection of documents (as wellas a useful glossary), the editors prefaceeach document and provide explanatorynotes with references to Starkeys publishedworks. The editors transcription and Eng-lish translation of the documents (most ofthem unpublished) are excellent. This bookis an important contribution both to thehistory of alchemy and to the history ofearly modern experimental practice.

ANTONIO CLERICUZIO

KATHARINE PARK, Secrets of Women. Gen-der, Generation, and the Origins of Hu-man Dissection. New York: The MITPress, 2006. 419 pp., ISBN 1-890951-67-6.

Katharine Parks book on the beginningsof human anatomy in late medieval and Re-naissance Italy brings together several of herearlier studies on this topic and adds muchnew material. She places women at the cen-ter of the development of human anatomyrather than, as it has often been the case,on its sidelines. Enormously learned andclearly written, the book provocatively in-termingles accounts of the dissections ofholy women and aristocratic wives withthe more familiar texts of surgeons and phy-sicians, and shows that dissection played animportant role in changing views of wo-mens bodies and in involving male physi-cians and surgeons in obstetrical care.

Parks introduction explains her method:by looking at all the settings, not only aca-demic ones, in which female bodies wereopened between the late thirteenth and

the mid-sixteenth centuries in Italy, sheseeks to broaden and redefine the practiceof anatomy in this period. She argues thatthe inherent mysteriousness of womensbodies and their functions made them espe-cially prized subjects of dissection, and thatthis attention to womens bodies led dissec-tion to become a more widely used practiceto learn about the body in general. Her dis-cussion of these topics leads also to a broad-er account of the health and health care ofelite women.

Parks first chapter focuses on the dissec-tions of two holy women in the early four-teenth century, Chiara of Montefalco andMargherita of Citta` di Castello. Park makesshort work of the myth of Christian tabooson dissections. She uses Chiaras canoniza-tion hearing in 1320 as well as various con-temporary accounts of the womens lives todocument the rare practice of holy anato-my, which established the womens sancti-ty by means of miraculous evidence foundin their bodies. Park argues that this practi-ce only performed on women in this pe-riod helped to regularize the performanceof human anatomy and tells us much aboutcontemporary views of womens bodies.

Park then examines several manuscripttreatises on female anatomy to outline whatwas known about womens bodies in latemedieval Italy and how this knowledgechanged. Following Monica Green, she ar-gues that learned writers increasingly de-fined women in terms of their reproductivefunctions. The secrets of women litera-ture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centu-ries subsequently influenced the firstprinted anatomical texts such as the Fasicu-lo de medicina of 1494, whose first illustra-tion was of a uterus.

From the late fifteenth century onward,autopsies of aristocratic Florentine womenwere performed. Park situates these in thecontext of concerns about inheritance andgeneration, and also demonstrates the deepinvolvement of male practitioners in thehealth care of these women. While the ac-tual birth may have been attended by a mid-wife, other forms of obstetrical care wereincreasingly assigned to male physicians,

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and various learned theories about genera-tion and inheritance contested for attentionwith popular ideas. The relative roles ofmale and female in generation were by nomeans agreed upon, however importantthese were to dynastic considerations.

Park returns to holy anatomy in herfourth chapter to reveal how much haschanged by the sixteenth century. UnlikeChiara, who had been opened by her fellownuns, the corpse of the mystic Elena Du-glioli was subjected in 1520 to multiple in-spections by learned men, including theanatomist Jacopo Barengario of Carpi.

While Chiaras heart had been found tohave a cross incised in it, the evidence ofElenas sanctity was far more disputed:her breasts were repeatedly dissected to de-termine whether they really produced milkafter her death. Parks further discussionof Barengario leads to an account of Vesa-lius in the final chapter, and here the focuson women brings a new dimension to thismuch-studied figure.

This is an important book that substan-tially rewrites the early history of anatomy.It brings together a wide range of historicalevidence, including iconographic evidence,to argue convincingly for the centrality ofwomen to this history, and it is the cumula-tive effect of this evidence rather than its in-dividual elements that is most telling. Thebook is well produced, with