Science and the Renaissance

A review of Dr Wightman's book by the late Professor V. P. Zubov is published on pp. 131–4 of this volume—Editors.

Kristeller P. O. , The classics and renaissance thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1955); Studies in renaissance thought and letters (Rome, 1956), especially pp. 576–581. Randall J. H. Jnr. , The school of Padua and the emergence of modern science (Padua, 1961). This version of the well-known articles contains long textual citations not provided in the latter. Professor Randall's Aristotle (New York, 1960; Columbia paperback, 1962) is a most attractively written and stimulating work; but some Aristotelian scholars warn that it leans rather heavily on the controversial chronology of Jaeger and tends to see Aristotle through the eyes of a follower of Dewey. Other ‘episodes’ in the steady revaluation of Aristotle in recent decades are Lukasiewicz Ian , Aristotle's syllogistic (Oxford, 1951), Solmsen E. , Aristotle's system of the physical world (Ithaca, N.Y., 1960), and Schramm Matthias , “Aristotelianism—Basis and obstacle to scientific progress in the Middle Ages”, History of Science, ii, and see also reference 3.

For Italian ‘Platonism’, Wind's E. Pagan mysteries in the Renaissance (London, 1958) is both penetrating and far ranging. For examples of both the degree and the manner in which Marsilio Ficino delivered the message of Plato through the mouth of Plotinus see especially p. 28.

Hay Denys , The Italian Renaissance in its historical background (Cambridge, 1961), also a series of Third Programme talks, B.B.C., 1963.

Ferguson W. K. , The Renaissance in historical thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).

There was a ‘chair’ at Padua for the teaching of plant science in relation to materia medica: I have not been able to discover whether it contained the name ‘Botanica’.

Turner W. , in his Avium praecipuarum quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est historia (Cologne, 1544), records that he resorted to dissection to check the ancient authorities. Ed. and tr. Evans A. H. (Cambridge, 1903) 124.

Not in his highly informative English naturalists from Neckham to Ray (Cambridge, 1947), nor in the important and temperate Herbert Spencer Lecture, Synthetic philosophy in the seventeenth century (Oxford, 1945), but in his Gifford Lectures, Natural religion and Christian theology, First series (Cambridge, 1953), where in chapters 16 and 17 such passages as the following occur too frequently: “It is obvious that the scientific revolution owed more to the botanists and zoologists and to the doctors and explorers than to the astronomers” (p. 80). On p. 126 occurs a quite shocking estimate of the part played by Tycho Brahe and Kepler.

The ‘ideological struggle’ between ‘astronomers’ and ‘physicists’ is quite another matter, and is well deployed in an article (on the use of ‘hypothesis’) by Blake R. M. in Theories of scientific method (ed. Madden E. H. , Seattle, 1960).

The suggestiveness—and the deceptiveness—of words is also illustrated by Harvey's mention of the Aristotelian idea of circulatio: Harvey may have been a little less of a ‘new’ scientist than he is commonly given credit for. See Pagel W. , “William Harvey and the purpose of the circulation”, Isis, xlii (1951) 22.

The qualification is prompted by the fashionable habit of assuming that ‘of course’ chemistry is now part of physics. But what is ‘physics’ ? A highly abstract structure of relations whose interpretation owes a lot more to the concepts elaborated by nineteenth-century chemists—and Aristotle—than such superficial clichés allow for. See Duhem , Le mixte, quoted and discussed in my Science and the Renaissance, i, 165–6. A. N. Whitehead saw this nearly forty years ago: “The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics?” (Science and the modern world, New York, 1952, p. 24).

Alberti L. B. , On painting (London, 1956). The Introduction by the translator, Spence J. R. , is suggestive and scholarly.

Olschki L. , Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur (i, Heidelberg, 1919; ii, Leipzig, 1922; iii, Halle a.S., 1927).

Papini R. , Francesco di Giorgio, architetto (Firenze, 1946). Of special significance are the double parallel cranks and govenor shown in Lynn White Jnr., Medieval technology and social change (Oxford, 1962).

Centaurus, vii (1961) 220, viii (1963) 698.

In a lecture to the British Society for the History of Science of which he kindly showed me the MS.

Hexter J. H. , Reappraisals in history (London, 1961).

Cicero , De divinatione, ii, 88–99.

La science au seizième siècle (Royaumont, 1957; published Paris, 1960) 93–113, especially pp. 112–3.

Longhi R. , Piero della Francesca, tr. Penlock L. (London, n.d.); Stokes Adrian , Art and science (London, 1948); Clark Kenneth Sir , Piero della Francesca (London, 1951) and “Leon Battista Alberti on painting”, Proceedings of the British Academy, xxx (1944) 283–302; Holt E. G. , Documentary history of art (Doubleday Anchor, New York, 1957) i; Berenson B. , Piero della Francesca—The ineloquent in art (London, 1954).

Stevenson R. A. M. , Velazquez (revised edition, London, 1962); the chapter “His Colour”, especially pp. 92, 109, 110.

Quoted by Gombrich E. H. , Art and illusion—a study in the psychology of pictorial representation (London, 1960).

The same applies to Marsilio Ficino as shown by Wind , op. cit., n. 3, in a long footnote on p. 58.

Quoted by Waetzoldt W. , Dürer (London, 1950) 220.

Bochner S. , Isis, liv (1963) 179 f.

Mittelstrass J. , Die Rettung der Phānomene (Berlin, 1962).

Sambursky S. , Physics of the Stoics (London, 1959), and Pagel W. , Das medizinische Weltbild des Paracelsus—seine Zusammenhang mit Neuplatonismus und Gnosis (Wiesbaden, 1962).

Tartaglia N. , Quesiti et inventioni diverse (Venice, 1546), Lettori.

“Excurro etiam in metaphysicam Aristotelis, seu potius Physicam coelestem et causas motuum naturalis inquiro; ex qua consideratione tandem non obscura nascuntur argumenta quibus sola Copernici de mundo opinio (pauculis mutatis) vera, reliquae duae falsae convincuntur etc.”, Astronomia nova (1609) fo. xxx 2 v.

At this stage I take the opportunity to remind historians of science of the many valuable insights contained in Dr Mary Hesse's recent Forces and fields (especially Chs. 2, 3 and 4, also pp. 98–101)—a book that because of its somewhat ‘philosophical’ approach might be overlooked by them.

Quoted by Waetzoldt W. , op. cit., n. 24.