Beasts of the New Jerusalem: John Jonston's Natural History and the Launching of Millenarian Pedagogy in the Seventeenth Century

In references to Gessner, I am following what was apparently his own preference in the spelling of his name, as argued by Pyle Cynthia M. , “Conrad Gessner on the spelling of his name”, Archives of natural history, xxvii (2000), 175–86.

Foucault Michel , The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences (New York, 1970), 129.

Ashworth William B. Jr , “Natural history and the emblematic world view”, in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. by Lindberg D. Westman R. (Cambridge, 1990), 303–32, p. 317.

Ashworth William B. Jr , “Emblematic natural history of the Renaissance”, in Cultures of natural history, ed. by Jardine N. Secord J. Spary E. (Cambridge, 1996), 17–37, pp. 27–28. Edward Topsell, Gessner's and Aldrovandi's English translator and emblematic compatriot, likewise incorporated New World animals, beyond those of Gessner and Aldrovandi, in both his History of four-footed beasts and Fowles of heaven.

Crellin J. K. , “John Jonston”, in Dictionary of scientific biography; Findlen Paula , “Jokes of nature and jokes of knowledge”, Renaissance quarterly, xliii (1990), 292–331, p. 302 n. 27, and 312 n. 29; Copenhaver Brian P. , “A tale of two fishes: Magical objects in natural history from Antiquity through the Scientific Revolution”, Journal of the history of ideas, lii (1991), 1991–98, p. 387; Harrison Peter , The Bible, Protestantism, and the rise of natural science (Cambridge, 1998), 86; Kealy Thomas P. , “Refiguring divinity: Literature and natural history in the Scientific Revolution”, Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 2000, 33; and Ogilvie Brian , The science of describing (Chicago, 2006), 243.

I will thus, in general, be following Charles Webster, who argues in his monumental study of The Great Instauration (London, 1975) for a direct influence of millenarianism on the development of modern science, although his focus is limited primarily to Puritanism in England. Peter Harrison, in The Bible, Protestantism, and the rise of natural science (ref. 5), advocates a more general link between Protestantism (rather than just Puritanism) and science, as I do, but he argues for an indirect link between the literalist mentality of much of Protestantism and the emergence of modern science, a characterization that doesn't apply in the case of Jonston. The present article is thus further evidence of the complexity of the relationship between Protestantism and early modern science. For a brief historiographical survey of different perspectives on this relationship, see Harrison's discussion on pp. 5–8.

The major biographical source on Jonston is Tadeusz Bilikiewicz, Jan Jonston 1603–1675: Żywot i działalność lekarska (Warsaw, 1931). For works in English see Matuszewski Adam , “Jan Jonston: Outstanding scholar of the 17th century”, Studia Comeniana et historica, xix, no. 39 (1989), 37–53, as well as the brief sketches in the Dictionary of scientific biography (by Crellin J. K. ) and the Dictionary of national biography (by Thomas Seccombe/Yolanda Foote), and the short article by Witold Lisowski, “Doctor Jan Jonston from Szamotuly (1603–1675)”, Materia medica Polona, xx (1988), 1988–4.

Jonston John , Thaumatographia naturalis in decem classes distincta (Amsterdam, 1632); English translation: An history of the wonderful things of nature: Set forth in ten severall classes (London, 1657). Text references are to the English edition. It is at least some indication of Jonston's reputation among his contemporaries that John Rowland, the English translator of this work twenty-five years after its original publication, commented in his Epistle Dedicatory that Jonston “was himself indeed A Wonder in Nature, and might well make up the Eleventh Class with the History of himself, for his generall and vast understanding in the Universe”.

Jonston John , Historia naturalis de quadrupedibus (Frankfurt, 1650); English translation: A description of the nature of four-footed beasts, transl. by J. P. (Amsterdam, 1678), text references are to the English edition; Historia naturalis de avibus (Frankfurt, 1650); Historia naturalis de piscibus et cetis (Frankfurt, 1650); Historia naturalis de exanguibus aquaticis (Frankfurt, 1650); Historia naturalis de insectis (Frankfurt, 1653); and Historia naturalis de serpentibus (Frankfurt, 1653). In listing the volumes of Historia naturalis here, I have followed what has become the standard order, which is displayed both in the original 1650–53 edition contained in the Landmarks of Science (Series II) monograph collection as well as in the 1657 Amsterdam (Latin) edition. This is not, however, the order that Jonston assumed for the volumes in his general preface contained in Historia naturalis de piscibus (which is the third volume in the standard order). In that general preface to what certainly must have been the first volume to appear, he says that he was not much concerned which volume was published first (the publisher chose fish) and he tells his readers to look in the weeks to come for the already prepared volumes on birds, quadrupeds, and marine invertebrates.

Many of Jonston's other works, in natural history and beyond, will be discussed in later sections.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 6; Historia naturalis de avibus (ref. 9), 7. Georg Markgraf's Historia naturalis Brasiliensis was published in 1648.

Jonston , Four-footed beasts (ref. 9), 5, 111.

Jonston John , Naturae constantia seu diatribe in qua, per posteriorum temporum cum prioribus collactionem mundum, nec ratione sui totius, nec ratione partium, universaliter et perpetuo in pejus ruere ostenditur (Amsterdam, 1632); English translation: An history of the constancy of nature (London, 1657), 91. Text references are to the English edition. Jonston, Four-footed beasts (ref. 9), 106; Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), 354.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), 301; Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus, quoted in Copenhaver, “A tale of two fishes” (ref. 5), 387.

Harrison , The Bible (ref. 5), 87–88. Further evidence of Jonston's caution and concern with weighing the available evidence can be found in the fact that, with regard to his 1628 medical inquiry into the question of whether the prophetic visions of a young Polish woman were of natural or supernatural origin, he concluded that a decision could not be reached with the meagre evidence on hand, but would need to wait until the time when the prophesied events were supposed to occur. See Hotson Howard , Paradise postponed (Dordrecht, 2000), 158, for a brief account.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 6. I will discuss the larger significance of Jonston's mnemonical emphasis in a subsequent section.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8).

On Gessner, see Blair Ann , “Reading strategies for coping with information overload ca. 1550–1700”, Journal of the history of ideas, lxiv (2003), 11–28, p. 17. Regarding Aldrovandi, L. R. Lind comments that “[a]lthough he observed the structure and habits of animals and described many specific [anatomical] details … classification was for Aldrovandi a mnemonic device and not a system corresponding to a natural order or structure”. Lind , ed. and transl., Aldrovandi on chickens: The ornithology of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1600), Volume II, Book XIV ( Norman OK , 1963), p. xxxv.

Paula Findlen mentions Aldrovandi's practice of classifying animals according to the shape of their hooves as one of the Italian's specific contributions to natural history. Findlen , “Ulisse Aldrovandi”, in Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution: From Copernicus to Newton, ed. by Applebaum W. (New York, 2000), 21.

Jonston , Four-footed beasts (ref. 9), [vi].

Foucault , The order of things (ref. 2), 128–9; Ashworth , “Natural history and the emblematic world view” (ref. 3), 317–18.

Jonston , Four-footed beasts (ref. 9), 15.

Jonston , Four-footed beasts (ref. 9), 100.

Jonston , Four-footed beasts (ref. 9), 72, 100.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), 301; Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 4.

Jonston , Four-footed beasts (ref. 9), 4, 18.

Jonston , Four-footed beasts (ref. 9), 106.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 6.

Gessner Conrad , Historia animalium (5 vols, Zurich, 1551–87), iii, 509–20; Aldrovandi Ulisse , Ornithologiae hoc est de avibus historia (3 vols, Bologna, 1599–1603), iii, 324–69; Jonston , Historia naturalis de avibus (ref. 9), 114–16. See Ashworth , “Natural history and the emblematic world view” (ref. 3), 313–16 for a description of the great growth of emblematics during the late sixteenth century in relation to Aldrovandi's work.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 4–5.

The confluence of millenarianism and the revival of learning and the relation of this rising stream of thought to the development of early modern science, particularly in England, has of course long been discussed and debated. It was an aspect of Robert K. Merton's original thesis regarding the connections between Puritanism and English science (see Merton , Science, technology and society in seventeenth-century England (New York, 1970)), and has weathered decades of scrutiny rather well. It also forms the organizing framework of Webster's The Great Instauration (ref. 6). For a brief assessment of the Merton thesis in light of the attendant historiography, see Brooke John H. , Science and religion: Some historical perspectives (Cambridge, 1991), 109–16.

I am referring here to the six-volume edition published in Amsterdam in 1657.

Jonston , Constancy of nature (ref. 13). Jonston mentioned that in composing The constancy of nature he “borrowed matter” from George Hakewill, while “preserving my own meaning” (p. 3). Hakewill's influential and energetic defence of the intellectual capacities of his era, called An apologie or declaration of the power and providence of God, was first published in 1627. Richard Foster Jones compares and contrasts Hakewill and Jonston, saying that the chief difference between the two is the greater emphasis placed by Jonston on scientific discoveries and the significance of Bacon ( Jones , Ancients and moderns (St. Louis, 1961), 36–38), and Charles Webster discusses Hakewill and Jonston in the context of seventeenth-century millenarianism ( Webster , The Great Instauration (ref. 6), 19–21), as does Howard Hotson (Paradise postponed (ref. 15), 158–9). Rob Iliffe situates Hakewill's and Jonston's critique of the decay thesis within a larger discussion of early modern views of time in “The masculine birth of time: Temporal frameworks of early modern natural philosophy”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxiii (2000), 2000–53, pp. 439–40.

Jonston , Constancy of nature (ref. 13), 1, 177, 170.

Jonston , Constancy of nature (ref. 13), 83, 84. In Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 6, Jonston refers to Gessner as “the German Pliny”, and although Charles Raven, in Natural religion and Christian theology (Cambridge, 1953), 84, suggests that the tradition of applying this appellation to Gessner began with Cuvier in the early nineteenth century, Jonston's use of it here extends the practice back at least another century and a half. Pope's couplet is: “Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be, and all was light”.

Jonston , Constancy of nature (ref. 13), [iv—v], [viii].

Bacon Francis , The works of Francis Bacon, ed. by Spedding J. Ellis R. L. Heath D. D. (14 vols, London, 1857–74), iii, 218; italics in the original. For discussions of “the rehabilitation of curiosity” in seventeenth-century England, see Eamon William , Science and the secrets of nature: Books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture (Princeton, NJ, 1994), chaps. 9–10, and Harrison Peter , “Curiosity, forbidden knowledge, and the reformation of natural philosophy in early modern England”, Isis, xcii (2001), 2001–90. See Morgan's John Godly learning (Cambridge, 1986) for a broad treatment of Puritan attitudes toward intellectual pursuits.

Bacon , Works (ref. 37), viii, 46.

Bacon , Works (ref. 37), viii, 359–60.

For biographical material on Andreae, see Montgomery John W. , Cross and crucible: Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654), phoenix of the theologians (2 vols, The Hague, 1973) as well as Hans Aarsleff's “Johann Valentin Andreae” in the Dictionary of scientific biography. On Andreae and Rosicrucianism, see Yates Frances , The Rosicrucian enlightenment (London, 1972), chap. 12.

Andreae Johann Valentin , Christianopolis, transl. by Thompson Edward H. (Dordrecht and Boston, 1999), 213. Frances Yates points out that Christianopolis was influenced by Campanella's City of the Sun, which was written as early as 1602, was carried to Germany in manuscript around 1614 by an associate of Andreae's, and was published at Frankfurt in 1623. The City of the Sun featured a similar visual display of natural history items, and Yates suggests that such arrangements can be seen as encyclopaedic, architectural memory systems. Yates , The art of memory (Chicago, 1966), 377–8.

Andreae , Christianopolis (ref. 41), 168, 240.

Andreae , Christianopolis (ref. 41), 169.

Andreae , Christianopolis (ref. 41), 168–69.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), [v].

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), [iii].

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 6. For recent discussions of the development of natural history as a discipline during the early modern era, particularly in Italy, see Findlen's Paula Possessing nature: Museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994) and “Courting nature”, in Cultures of natural history (ref. 4), 57–74.

See Hotson Howard , Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588–1638 (Oxford, 2000) and Paradise postponed (ref. 15) for excellent treatments of Alsted's diverse intellectual pursuits. Walter Ong has noted that “Alsted never set pen to paper without didactic purpose, and the encyclopedias, certainly the greatest monuments to the definition ever constructed by the mind of man, are as didactic as it is possible to be without bragging about the fact — Although they do this, too”. Ong, Ramus, method, and the decay of dialogue: From the art of discourse to the art of reason (Cambridge, MA, 1958/1983), 163.

For biographical information on Comenius, see Spinka Matthew , John Amos Comenius: That incomparable Moravian (Chicago, 1943); Blekastad Milada , Comenius: Versuch eines Umrisses von Leben, Werk und Schicksal Jan Amos Komensky (Oslo, 1969); Murphy Daniel , Comenius: A critical reassessment of his life and work (Dublin, 1995), esp. chap. 2; and Hans Aarsleff's “John Amos Comenius” in the Dictionary of scientific biography.

Comenius John Amos , Didactica magna (Amsterdam, 1657). English translation: The great didactic, ed. and transl. by Keatinge M. W. (London, 1896), 159. Text references are to the English edition. Didactica magna was first published, in 1657, as part of a collection of Comenius's works entitled Opera didactica omnia. See Yates , Rosicrucian enlightenment (ref. 40), chap. 12, for a discussion of Andreae's influence on Comenius. Yates concludes this chapter by saying that, although it was no longer called “Rosicrucian”, Andreae's “utopian ideal of an enlightened philanthropic society, in touch with spiritual agencies … was one of the great subterranean forces of the wartime years, propagated by men like Comenius, Samuel Hartlib, and John Dury, all influenced by Andreae” (p. 170).

Merton , Science, technology and society (ref. 31), 116–23, points to the wide influence of Comenius (as well as the prior influence of Peter Ramus) both on the Continent and in England, especially with regard to the norms of utilitarianism and empiricism that were so prominent in his educational program. Webster , Great Instauration (ref. 6), 100–15 provides an extended discussion of Bacon, Comenius, Hartlib and the development of educational methods in England during the early seventeenth century. On the significance of the prophecy in Daniel 12:4, see Webster's discussion on pp. 21–27.

For a synopsis of Jonston's correspondence with Hartlib, see Matuszewski Adam , “Jan Jonston's letters to Samuel Hartlib as the source of information about Jan Amos Komenský (Comenius)”, Studia Comeniana et historica, xxvi, nos. 55–56 (1996), 161–4. Jonston's (1646) book on dendrology describes the cultivation and use of eleven species of fruit trees.

Most of Jonston's books are listed in the references of the present paper. See also Crellin , “John Jonston” (ref. 5), 165, and Matuszewski , “Jan Jonston” (ref. 7), 47.

This brief account of the book is based largely on the description given in Matuszewski , “Jan Jonston” (ref. 7), 47.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 4.

Ong , Ramus, method, and the decay of dialogue (ref. 48), 164.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), [iii, iv], italics in the original.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 5.

On “information overload”, see Blair , op. cit. (ref. 18), and Ogilvie Brian W. , “The many books of nature: Renaissance naturalists and information overload”, Journal of the history of ideas, lxiv (2003), 29–40. See also Ogilvie , The science of describing (ref. 5).

Bacon , “Of studies”, in Works (ref. 37), xii, 252–3; New organon, in Works, viii, 136; Sylva sylvarum, in Works, iv, 155.

Andreae , Christianopolis (ref. 41), 210.

Comenius John Amos , Via lucis (Amsterdam, 1668). English translation: The way of light, ed. and transl. by Campagnac E. T. (Liverpool, 1938), chap. 16, sections 12–19. Text references are to the English edition.

From Hotson , Johann Heinrich Alsted (ref. 48), 40.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), [v—vi]. See Yates , The art of memory (ref. 41) and Hotson, Johan Heinrich Alsted (ref. 48) on Platonism, Lullism, and Alsted. And for a recent treatment of memory in relation to early modern natural history, see Yeo Richard , “Between memory and paperbooks: Baconianism and natural history in seventeenth-century England”, History of science, xlv (2007), 1–46.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 6.

On the relation between words and things in the thought of Bacon and Comenius, particularly in relation to the development of universal language schemes, see Slaughter M. M. , Universal languages and scientific taxonomy (Cambridge, 1982), chap. 4.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 5.

Comenius John Amos , Orbis pictus: A facsimile of the first English edition of 1659 introduced by John E. Sadler (London, 1968). Orbis sensualium pictus was first published in Nuremberg in 1658. See John Sadler's introduction to the 1968 edition for a discussion of Comenius's philosophical orientation and educational methods. Michael Bath, in a work on emblem books in Renaissance England, argues that Orbis pictus, while not an emblem book, nevertheless has emblematic features, demonstrating that, as with Jonston, Comenius's relation to the “emblematic world view” is somewhat complex. He says that “[w]hatever its progressive educational agenda, the book is conservative in its image of the cosmos as an ordered speculum which can be reduced to fixed terms…. That a large number of Comenius's chapters are moral readings of the book of nature suggests their essential conformity with emblems”. Bath, Speaking pictures: English emblem books and Renaissance culture (London, 1994), 41, 42.

Ashworth , “Emblematic natural history of the Renaissance” (ref. 4), 23–27. See also Ashworth's “The persistent beast: Recurring images in early zoological illustration”, in The natural sciences and the arts, ed. by Ellenius Allen (Uppsala, 1985), 46–66.

I am referring to the 1657 Amsterdam edition, where the illustrations are grouped together on separate pages distributed throughout the volumes. This image count is approximate, and includes numerous anatomical or illustrative details and groups of associated images (especially in the volume on insects, which itself contains over 1300 images).

Comenius , Orbis pictus (ref. 68), 90, 94–95. Frances Yates locates Comenius in the Campanella-Andreae lineage, saying that “there can be no doubt that the Orbis pictus came straight out of Campanella's City of the Sun“but that when reformulated by Comenius, Campanella's “magic memory system becomes a perfectly rational, and extremely original and valuable, language primer”. She therefore concludes that the solarian utopia “was thus probably the ultimate source of the new visual education”. For Yates, Comenius's work, along with many of the writings of his Ramist teacher, Alsted, is a good example of a general and gradual seventeenth-century shift from Renaissance occult modes of thinking to more rational methods. Yates , The art of memory (ref. 41), 377–8.

Murphy , Comenius (ref. 49), 70–78 discusses the realist movement in early modern education from Bacon to Comenius.

Comenius , Orbis pictus (ref. 68), 88, 90, italics in the original. The empiricist premise stated here is a famous Aristotelian, and subsequently Thomistic, proposition. Aristotle presents the idea in Posterior analytics II, 19.100a3–9 and Metaphysics I, 1.980a25–981a3, where he also asserts a presumably universal human preference for the sense of sight as a way to knowledge. Aquinas discusses the idea further in Summa theologiae Ia, 84, 6.

Regarding Comenius's view of the unitary forces of nature, Sadler notes that “Comenius thought of the universe as a mighty organism which he describes as a ‘perpetual mover or a tree rising from its roots’ and not just a ‘pile of wood tied together’”. Sadler, in Comenius, Orbis pictus (ref. 68), 30–31.

Comenius , The way of light (ref. 62), chap. 14, sections 6–7.

On Neoplatonic aspirations in pansophical thought, see Čapkov Dagmar , “Comenius and his ideals: Escape from the labyrinth”, in Samuel Hartlib and universal reformation, ed. by Greengrass M. Leslie M. Raylor T. (Cambridge, 1994), 75–91, pp. 76–77.

Comenius , The way of light (ref. 62), Dedication, sections 16–18; chap. 12, section xiv. See also chap. 16, sections 9–11, for his explanation of how the three books figure into his basic plan for pansophia. His firm belief in “common notions which are inborn in us all” can perhaps be reconciled with the empirical dictum discussed above (that “there is nothing in the understanding which was not before in the sense”) by the proposition that sensory experience is the necessary spark or stimulus that links the light within and the light without, thus illuminating the understanding.

Jean Piaget discusses the relation of Comenius's metaphysical and educational ideas in “The significance of John Amos Comenius at the present time”, in John Amos Comenius on education (New York, 1967), 2–8.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), [iv].

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 4.

Kučera Zdeněk , “John Amos Comenius: The theologian of universality”, in Homage to J. A. Comenius, edited by Peková J. (Prague, 1991), 190–7, p. 191. Sobotka Milan , “J. A. Comenius and philosophy of his time”, also in Homage to J. A. Comenius, 125–35, discusses Comenius in relation to modern philosophy and places him in a lineage stretching from Campanella to nineteenth-century idealists such as Schelling and Hegel.

Bono James J. , The word of God and the languages of man (Madison, WI, 1995), 81.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 5. Jonston and Comenius, of course, were not alone in this effort. For a discussion of the “deeper current of Neoplatonic exemplarist metaphysics underlying Alsted's encyclopedic, hermetic, and apocalyptic thought”, see Hotson , Johann Heinrich Alsted (ref. 48), esp. 170–2, 200–1.

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 5.

Both these works of Bacon's were published in 1627.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), [2].

Jonston , Historia naturalis de piscibus (ref. 9), 5.

Keatinge M. W. discusses the relation between Bacon and Comenius on this point in his introduction to Comenius, Great didactic (ref. 50), 27, 33, 35. See also Čapkov , “Comenius and his ideals” (ref. 76), 81–85, and Blair Ann , “Mosaic physics and the search for a pious natural philosophy in the late Renaissance”, Isis, xci (2000), 32–58, pp. 41–42.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), [iv].

Bacon advised in Valerius terminus that “if any man shall think by view and inquiry into these sensible and material things, to attain to any light for the revealing of the nature or will of God, he shall dangerously abuse himself” (Bacon, Works (ref. 37), iii, 218). He also declared in The advancement of learning that “[t]he world is not the image of God” (Works, iv, 341). And he famously stated that the purpose of Solomon's House in New Atlantis was “the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire” (Works, iii, 156).

Jonston , Constancy of nature (ref. 13), 6.

Jonston , Wonderful things of nature (ref. 8), 354.

Bacon's image, of course, figured prominently in the frontispiece of Sprat's influential History of the Royal Society, published in 1667.

Comenius , The way of light (ref. 62), Dedication , p. 3.

Comenius , The way of light (ref. 62), Dedication, p. 11. Comenius saw the inquiries and publications of the Royal Society as particularly helpful in the realm of “panhistoria”, which involved, among other things, “gathering together the history of Nature with the utmost fidelity and accuracy” (p. 152).

Comenius , The way of light (ref. 62), Dedication, pp. 18–19.

Comenius , The way of light (ref. 62), Dedication, p. 20.

Sprat Thomas , History of the Royal Society, ed. by Cope Jackson I. Whitmore Harold (St. Louis, 1958), 371.

Ray John , The ornithology of Francis Willughby (London, 1678), [vi, vii]. Charles Raven discusses the Royal Society's role in publishing the Ornithology in his John Ray, naturalist (Cambridge, 1942), 325.

Ray John , Further correspondence of John Ray, edited by Gunther R. W. T. (London, 1928), 159–160.

Ray , Ornithology (ref. 99), [vi].

For discussions of the Royal Society's museum, Grew's catalogue, and their wider influence, see Hunter Michael , Establishing the new science: The experience of the early Royal Society (Woodbridge, UK, 1989), chap. 4, and Findlen , Possessing nature (ref. 47), 400–1.

See Hunter , Establishing the new science (ref. 102), 144.

Grew Nehemiah , Musaeum Regalis Societatis, or a catalogue & description of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham Colledge (London, 1681), 40, 84, 96, 104–5.

Grew , Musaeum (ref. 104), 106. For a detailed treatment of the place of the pilot fish in the history of science, and the decline of the magical interpretation in the early modern era, see Copenhaver, “A tale of two fishes” (ref. 5).

On the complex associations among atheism, enthusiasm, and seventeenth-century science, see Heyd Michael , Be sober and reasonable: The critique of enthusiasm in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Leiden, 1995), and Hunter Michael , Science and the shape of orthodoxy: Intellectual change in late seventeenth-century Britain (Woodbridge, UK, 1995), esp. chaps. 11 and 12.

See Hunter , Science and the shape of orthodoxy (ref. 106), 115.

On Casaubon's characterization of Descartes as an enthusiast, see Heyd , Be sober and reasonable (ref. 106), chap. 4.

Casaubon Meric , On learning , in Spiller Michael R. G. , “Concerning natural experimental philosophie” (The Hague, 1980), 209.

Grew Nehemiah , Cosmologia sacra: Or a discourse of the universe as it is the creature and kingdom of God (London, 1701), 1, 78. Agnes Arber discusses Grew's firm commitment to a mechanistic interpretation of nature in her “Tercentenary of Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712)”, Nature, cxlvii (1941), 1941–2.

Comenius John Amos , Naturall philosophie reformed by divine light: Or, A synopsis of physicks (London, 1651), [xiii].

Čapkov , “Comenius and his ideals” (ref. 76), 79, 83. See also Blair , “Mosaic physics” (ref. 88) for further discussion of pansophic, and especially Comenian, philosophy in relation to early modern theology and natural philosophy.

Foucault , The order of things (ref. 2), 132, 136–7.

Descartes's parting comment to Comenius is quoted in Spinka, John Amos Comenius (ref. 49), 92–93. For additional discussion of Descartes's assessment of Comenius, and of philosophical differences between them, see Murphy , Comenius (ref. 49), 29–30, and especially Jeroen Van de Ven and Erik-Jan Bos, “Se nihil daturum — Descartes's unpublished judgement of Comenius's Pansophiae prodromus (1639)”, The British journal for the history of philosophy, xii (2004), 2004–86.

Čapkov Dagmar discusses the relation between the rise of Cartesianism, Baconianism, and other modern currents of thought and the decline of pansophical ideas in “The writings of J. A. Comenius and seventeenth century thought”, in Symposium Comenianum 1986, ed. by Kyralová Marie Pívratská Jana (Prague, 1989), 75–87, as well as in “Comenius and his ideals” (ref. 76), 86–88.