Controlling the Experiment: Rhetoric,Court Patronage and the Experimental Method of Francesco Redi

Shadwell Thomas , The virtuoso (1676), ed. by Nicolson M. H. Rodes D. S. (Lincoln, Nebr., 1966), 72. Appropriately enough, these are the words of Sir Nicholas Gimcrack.

I owe this observation to W. J. Ashworth's unpublished paper on “The Garden of Eden: Evolution of a seventeenth-century image” (History of Science Society, Seattle, 1990), which discusses the Redi frontispieces in the larger context of changing images of nature. The illustrations are respectively from Francisa Redi Patritii Aretini Expérimenta circa generationem insectorum ad nobilissimum virum Carolum Dati (Amsterdam, 1671) and Francisci Redi Nobilis Aretini, Expérimenta circa res diversas naturales speciatim Mas, quae ex Indiis adferuntur. Ex Italico Latinitate donata (Amsterdam, 1675).

This point is made more comprehensively by Jay Tribby in his reading of Redi's Osservazioni intorno aile vipère; see his “Cooking (with) Clio and Cleo: Eloquence and experiment in seventeenth-century Florence”, Journal of the history of ideas, lii (1991), 417–39.

This transition is discussed in greater detail in Findlen P. , Possessing nature: Museums, collecting and scientific culture in early modern Italy (University of California Press, forthcoming). For the sixteenth-century background, see Schmitt C. , “Experience and experiment: A comparison of Zabarella's view with Galileo's De motu”, Studies in the Renaissance, xvi (1969), 80–138.

The term, the “new sensory natural history”, comes from the writings of Ulisse Aldrovandi (Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, Aldrovandi, ms. 21, IV, c.36) though it was used more frequently by later naturalists like Boccone and Redi. Boccone Paolo , Museo di piante rare delta Sicilia, Malta, Corsica, Italia, Piemonte e Germania (Venice, 1697), 2.

There is a growing literature on patronage, court culture and early modern science. For a sampling of this material, see Biagioli M. , “Galileo's system of patronage”, History of science, xxviii (1990), 1–62; idem, “Galileo the emblem maker”, Isis, lxxxi (1990), 230–53; idem, Galileo courtier (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming); Moran B. (ed.), Patronage and institutions: Science, technology and medicine at the European courts, 1500–1750 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1991); Smith P. H. , Science and culture in Baroque Europe: Johann Joachim Becher at the courts of the Holy Roman Empire, 1635–82 (Princeton U.P., forthcoming); and Westman R. , “The astronomer's role in the sixteenth century: A preliminary study”, History of science, xviii (1980), 105–47.

Redi was elected a member of the Accademia della Crusca, Florence's leading literary academy, in 1655, and served as its head from 1678 to 1690. In 1665 he was appointed as reader in Tuscan language at the Studio fiorentino. He was appointed court physician and superintendent of the fonderia and spezeria in 1666.

For a general overview of this tradition, see Galluzzi P. , “Il mecenatismo mediceo e le scienze”, in Idee, isiituzioni, scienza ed arti nella Firenze dei Medici , ed. by Vasoli C. (Florence, 1980), 189–215. The literature on Medici patronage is vast, so I will indicate only some of the most relevant works: De Rosa S. , “Alcuni aspetti della ‘committenza’ scientifica medicea prima di Galileo”, in Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del '500 (Florence, 1983), ii, 777–83; Goldberg E. L. , Patterns in late Medici art patronage (Princeton, 1983); Gombrich E. , “The early Medici as patrons of art”, in his Norm and form: Studies in the art of Renaissance I (London, 1966), 35–57; Stella R. , “Mecenati a Firenze tra Sei e Settecento: Aspetti dello stile Cosimo III”, Arte illustrata, liv (1973), 213–28.

See ref. 6.

Cole F. J. , A history of comparative anatomy from Aristotle to the eighteenth century (New York, 1975; 1st publ. 1949), passim; see also Belloni L. , “Francesco Redi”, Dictionary of scientific biography , ed. by Gillispie C. C. , xi (New York, 1975), 341–3. The Italian literature on Redi is quite large, so I will indicate only a few studies: Basile B. , L'invenzione del vero: La letteratura scientifica da Galilei ad Algarotli (Rome, 1987); Belloni L. , “Francesco Redi, biologo”, in Celebrazione dell'Accademia del Cimento nel tricentenario della fondazione (Domus Galilaeana, 1957) (Pisa, 1958), 53–70; Biagi M. L. Altieri , “Lingua e cultura di Francesco Redi medico”, Atti e memorie dell'Accademia Toscana di scienze e lettere la Colombara, xxxiii, n.s. xix (1968), 189–304; Viviani U. , Vita ed opère inédite di Francesco Redi (3 vols, Arezzo, 1928–31).

Middleton W. E. K. , The experimenters: A study of the Accademia del Cimento (Baltimore, 1971), 34.

Segre M. , In the wake of Galileo (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991), 127.

Biagioli M. , “Scientific revolution, social bricolage and etiquette”, in The scientific revolution in national context , ed. by Porter R. Teich M. (Cambridge, 1992), 11–54; idem, “Absolutism, the modern state and the development of scientific manners”, Critical inquiry, xix (1993), forthcoming.

Hampton T. , (ed.), Baroque topographies: Literature/history/philosophy (Yale French Studies, no. 80; New Haven, 1991), 3.

Knoefel P. K. (ed. and transl.), Francesco Redi on vipers (Leiden, 1988), 9 (hereafter Redi, Vipers); Redi Francesco , Esperienze intorno a diverse cose naturali, e particolarmente a quelle che ci son portale dall'Indie (Florence, 1686), 9. Wanda Bacchi discusses Redi's experimental philosophy generally in her “Su alcune note sperimentali di Francesco Redi”, Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze, vii (1982), 35–56, esp. p. 41.

Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, Aldrovandi, ms.21, IV, c.72. This passage is a post-Aristotelian rendering of material found in De anima 432a7 and generally in De sensu et sensatum. Appropriately enough, it also appears in the writings of William Harvey; see Wear A. , “William Harvey and the ‘way of anatomists’”, History of science, xxi (1983), 223–49, p. 237.

Galileo , Letter to the Grand Duchess Cristina , in Discoveries and opinions of Galileo, by. Drake S. (New York, 1957), 173–216, pp. 182–4, 186.

Redi Francesco , Experiments on the generation of insects , transl. by Bigelow M. (Chicago, 1909), 70 (hereafter Redi, Insects).

Ricci to Redi , Rome, 19 September 1673, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Redi. 211, f. 385.

Biagi Altieri , “Lingua e cultura” (ref. 10), 236–7, 243.

Redi , Insects (ref. 18), 64–65.

Ibid. , 64; idem. Vipers (ref. 15), 15.

This technique is wonderfully explicated by Tribby , “Cooking (with) Clio and Cleo” (ref. 3), esp. pp. 426–8.

Kircher Athanasius , Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1665 edn), ii, cf. 358, 360–1, 367–8; Redi , Insects (ref. 18), 34, 38, 43. For the fable of sound, see Galileo , The assayer , in Drake , Discoveries and opinions (ref. 17), 229–80, pp. 256–8.

See Dear P. , “Jesuit mathematical science and the reconstitution of experience in the early seventeenth century”, Studies in the history and philosophy of science, xviii (1987), 133–75.

Ironcially of course Redi did this with the help of William Harvey's very Aristotelian work on generation. Like Galileo, Redi's philosophical novelty lay more in the rhetoric surrounding the confrontation with material reality than in any real divergence from the practices of Aristotelian naturalists.

For a general overview of this subject, see Tribby J. , “Eloquence and experiment: The discourses of civil inquiry in seventeenth-century France and Italy” (Ph.D. diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1990).

Peregrini Matteo , Che alsavio è convenevole il corteggiare (Bologna, 1624). Unfortunately I have only been able to consult a French edition, from which I cite: Le sage en cour, transl. by de Marcassus Pierre (Paris, 1638), 123. Ciampoli Giovanni , Discorso sopra la corte di Roma , in Guglielminetti M. Masoero M. , “Lettere e prose inédite (o parzialmente édite) di Giovanni Ciampoli”, Studi secenteschi, xix (1978), 131–237, p. 233.

Tesauro Emanuele , Il cannocchiale aristotelico (5th edn, Turin, 1670), 1.

Giuseppe Ferroni to Redi, n.p., 14 November 1671, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, Redi. 211, f.319.

Here I am thinking of texts such as Baldassare Castiglione's The book of the courtier or, to cite a more local Tuscan product, Vincenzo Borghini's Il Riposo. Thanks to Jay Tribby for reminding me of the latter text as a potential model for Redi's work.

Fabroni Giovanni , Elogio di Francesco Redi (n.p., 1796), 13. The works of Redi's disciples are as follows: Bonomo Cosimo , Osservazioni intorno a' pellicelli del corpo umano (Florence, 1687); Caldesi Giovanni , Osservazioni anatomiche intorno alle tartarughe marittime, d'acqua dolce, & terrestre (Florence, 1687); Lorenzini Stefano , Osservazioni intorno alle lorpedini (Florence, 1678); and di Sangallo Pietro Paolo , Esperienze intorno alla generazione delle zanzare (Florence, 1679).

For Restoration England, see particularly Shapin S. Schaffer S. , Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985); and Dear P. , “‘Tortus in verba’: Rhetoric and authority in the early Royal Society”, Isis, lxxvi (1985), 145–61.

Sangallo , Esperienze (ref. 32), 3.

Redi , Osservazioni intorno agli animali viventi che si trovano negli animali viventi (Florence, 1684), 2 (hereafter Animali viventi); Redi to Steno, 1667, in Lettere di Francesco Redi patrizio aretino (3 vols, Florence, 1779), i, 301.

Sangallo , Esperienze (ref. 32), 5.

Lorenzini , Osservazioni (ref. 32), cf. 21, 77. For the history of the debates about these creatures, see Copenhaver B. , “A tale of two fishes: Magical objects in natural history from Antiquity through the scientific revolution”, Journal of the history of ideas, lii (1991), 373–98.

Redi , Insects (ref. 18), 53–64.

Redi to Viviani , Livorno, 21 March 1667, in Negri L. Morello N. Galluzzi P. , Niccold Stenone e la scienza in Toscana alla fine del '600 (Florence, 1986), 27.

Scherz G. , (ed.) and Pollock A. J. (transl.), Steno: Geological papers (Odense, 1969), 139.

Mario Biagioli has discussed the idea of anatomical “nonchalance” in relationship to the activities in the anatomical theatres of Bologna and Padua in his “Scientific revolution, social bricolage and etiquette” (ref. 13). For a brief discussion of Steno's popularity as a dissector, see Lux D. S. , Patronage and royal science in seventeenth-century France: The Académie de Physique in Caen (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989), 39–41.

In Negri Morello Galluzzi , Niccolò Stenone (ref. 39), 25.

Redi , Insects (ref. 18), 87, 89.

Redi , Animali viventi (ref. 35), 142–3; Cochrane E. , Florence in the forgotten centuries 1527–1800 (Chicago, 1973), 251.

Castiglione Baldassare , The book of the courtier, transl. by Singleton C. S. (New York, 1959), 146.

Redi , Vipers (ref. 15), 29. This issue is also raised by Tribby , “Cooking (with) Clio and Cleo” (ref. 3), 438–9.

Basile , L'invenzione del vero (ref. 10), 148; Castiglione , The book of the courtier (ref. 45), 180. For more on this episode, see Findlen P. , “The limits of civility and the ends of science” (paper given at the Clark Library, Los Angeles, Calif., 1991).

Tozzetti Giovanni Targioni , Atti e memorie inedite dell'Accademia del Cimento e notizie aneddote dei progressi delle scienze in Toscana (3 vols, Florence, 1780), i, 251.

Magalotti Lorenzo , Saggi, proemio, in Madrignani C. A. , “Il metodo scientifico di Francesco Redi”, La rassegna della letteratura italiana, lxv (1961), 476–500, p. 482.

Biagi Altieri , “Lingua e cultura” (ref. 10), 195; Madrignani , “Il metodo scientifico” (ref. 49), 499. For the broader context, see Cochrane , Florence in the forgotten centuries (ref. 44), 231–313; Diaz F. , II Granducato di Toscana: I Medici (Turin, 1976); idem, “L'idea di una nuova ‘elite sociale’ negli storici e trattatisti del principato”, Rivista storica italiana, xcii (1980), 572–87; and especially Litchfield R. B. , Emergence of a bureaucracy: The Florentine patricians 1530–1790 (Princeton, 1986).

Cochrane , Florence in the forgotten centuries (ref. 44), 255.

Peregrini , Le sage en cour (ref. 28), 68.

Tasso Torquato , Malpiglio, or on the court , in Tasso's dialogues, transl. by Tafton D. A. (Berkeley, Calif., 1982), 187: “Moreover … the professors of mathematics and natural philosophy can be courtiers just as they can be citizens.”.

For more on this general subject, see Nutton V. , (ed.), Medicine at the courts of Europe 1500–1837 (London, 1990); and Moran B. , “The prince and his physicians”, in his The alchemical world of the German court: Occult philosophy and chemical medicine in the circle of Moritz of Hessen (1572–1632) (Sudhoffs Archiv, Heft 29; Stuttgart, 1991), 68–85.

Tozzetti Targioni , Atti e memorie (ref. 48), i, 251.

Bianchini Giuseppe , Ragionamenti de' Granduchi di Toscana, c.98, in ibid., i, 164.

Steno , Canis carchariae dissectum caput, in Scherz, Steno: Geological papers (ref. 40), 69.

Settala to Boyle, Milan, 4 June 1671, Royal Society Archives, London, Boyle Letters, v, 78–79. On prince-practitioners, see Moran B. , “German prince-practitioners: Aspects of the development of courtly science, technology and procedures in the Renaissance”, Technology and culture, xxii (1981), 253–74.

Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome, Kircher, ms.556, f.63. For more on the scientific activities of the Medici in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, see Berti L. , Il Principe dello Studiolo. Francesco I dei Medici e la fine del Rinascimento fiorenlino (Florence, 1967); Covoni P. F. , Don Antonio de' Medici al Casino di San Marco (Florence, 1892); Galluzzi P. , “Motivi paracelsiani nella Toscana di Cosimo II e di Don Antonio dei Medici: Alchimia, mediana chimica e riforma del sapere”, in Scienze, credenze occulte, livelli di cultura (Florence, 1982), 31–62; Orlandi G. Lensi , Cosimo e Francesco de' Medici alchimisti (Florence, 1978).

Redi , Vipers (ref. 15), 3.

Ibid., 5–7. The Medici spezeria is the focal point of Tribby, “Cooking (with) Clio and Cleo” (ref. 3).

In Tozzetti Targioni , Atti e memorie (ref. 48), iii, 85.

Giovanni Pagni to Redi, Livorno, 15 April 1668, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, Redi. 209, ff. 172–173; Redi , Animali vivenli (ref. 35), 134–5.

Redi to Jacopo del Lapo, Dalla Corte all'Imbrogiana, 11 November 1681, in Lettere di Francesco Redi (Florence, 1825), 46.

Imbert G. , Francesco Redi (Milan, 1925), 44.

Eamon W. , “Science as a hunt, and some other metaphors of discovery in the Renaissance” (paper presented at the Society for Literature and Science, Portland, Oregon, 1990). See also idem, “Court, academy and printing house: Patronage and scientific careers in late Renaissance Italy” in Moran (ed.). Patronage and institutions (ref. 6), 25–50, pp. 26–27, 29; and Rossi P. , Philosophy, technology and the arts in the early modern era , transl. by Attanasio S. and ed. by Nelson B. (New York, 1970), 42. The connection between experimenting and hunting for Redi was already observed by Giovanni Fabroni, who wrote, “L'anatomia comparativa era uno de' più graditi studi del nostro Archiatro; ed a questo serviva di soggètto, talvolta, il risultato delle Cacce Reali, e della pesca”, Fabroni, Elogio (ref. 32), 12.

Cochrane , Florence in the forgotten centuries (ref. 44), 250.

Redi , Esperienze intorno alle cose naturali (ref. 15), 81.

Redi , Insects (ref. 18), 85; idem, Animali viventi (ref. 35), 142.

Tozzetti Targioni , Atti e memorie (ref. 48), ii, 18.

Castiglione , The book of the courtier (ref. 45), 38.

Tozzetti Targioni , Atti e memorie (ref. 48), i, 266.

For more on this subject, see Tribby Jay , “Stalking civility: Conversing and collecting in early modern Europe”, Rhetorica (1992, forthcoming).

Redi , Insects (ref. 18), 19.

Redi to Jacopo del Lapo, Dalle Corte alle Cacce d'Artimi[n]o, 30 September 1681, in Redi, Lettere (ref. 35), i, 81.

Redi , Insects (ref. 18), 95.

Tozzetti Targioni , in Redi , Vipers (ref. 15), p. xv.

Galluzzi P. , “L'Accademia del Cimento: ‘gusti’ dei Principe, filosofia e ideologia dell'esperimento”, Quaderni storici, xlviii (1981), 788–844; Biagioli , “Scientific revolution, social bricolage and etiquette” (ref. 13); Tribby Jay , “Of conversational dispositions and the Saggi's Proem”, in Documentary culture: Florence and Rome from Grand Duke Ferdinand I to Pope Alexander VII, ed. by Cropper E. (Bologna, 1992).

For example, the Esperienze fatte dal signor Francesco Redi alla presenza del Serenissimo Gran Duca di Toscana, in Opere del Signor Francesco Redi gentiluomo aretino Accademico della Crusca (Naples, 1687), ii, 107–15. In contrast to these court rituals, see the discussion of Royal Society protocol in Dear , “Totius in verba” (ref. 33); and Shapin Schaffer , Leviathan and the air-pump (ref. 33), esp. pp. 55–60.

Redi , Vipers (ref. 15), 6.

David Kuchta is currently at work on a study that considers ‘marginal’ figures at court, among them dwarves.

Peregrini , Le sage en cour (ref. 28), 12.

Redi , Vipers (ref. 15), 5. I have modified the translation slightly.

Cestoni Giacinto , Epistolario ad Antonio Vallisnieri, ed. by Baglioni Silvestro (2 vols, Rome, 1940–41), i, 303.

Redi , Vipers (ref. 15), 3.

I owe the clarifications in the ensuing paragraph to Jay Tribby.

Cestoni , Epistolario (ref. 84), i, 94, 176.

Ibid., i, 250, 259–60, 94 (in sequential order).

The 1671–72 inventory is reproduced in De Rosa, Niccolò Stenone nella Firenze e nell'Europa delsuo tempo (Florence, 1986). Abrief image of Cosimo III's patronage of science can be found in Targioni Tozzetti, Atti e memorie (ref. 48), iii, 2.

Basile , L'invenzione del vero (ref. 10), 53. Given the fact that the book appeared only a year after Ferdinando's death, perhaps we should attribute this to a decline that began at the end of his reign and accelerated under Cosimo.

The work is highly reminiscent of sections of the French physician Ambroise Paré's On monsters and marvels (1573), which also reported on objects found within the human body.

Cochrane , Florence in the forgotten centuries (ref. 44), 255. This was Redi's comment in 1684 on his observations on insects, published in 1668.

Boccone to Redi , Messina, 26 March 1669, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, Redi. 209, f.213. Bellini to Malpighi, Florence, 7 March 1678, in Altieri Biagi, “Forme della communicazione scientifica”, in Rosa A. Asor (ed.), Letteratura italiana. III. Le forme del testo. II. Laprosa (Turin, 1984), 891–947, p. 930.

Cochrane , Florence in the forgotten centuries (ref. 44), 250.

For a wonderful discussion of these practices, see Basile Bruno , “Alla scuola del Redi: Cosimo Bonomo”, L'invenzione del vero (ref. 10), 168–91.

Redi to Inghirami , Florence, 25 July 1660, in Redi , Lettere (ref. 35), iii, 2.

Scherz , Steno: Geological papers (ref. 40), 141. The details subsequently provided can be found in ibid., 219, 221 (n. 18).

Ibid., 69.

Here I am paraphrasing a point made by Steven Shapin in his discussion of civility: “‘A scholar and a gentleman’: The problematic identity of the scientific practitioner in early modern England”, History of science, xxix (1991), 279–327, p. 297.

Archives Royal Society , Letter Book Copy , 5, 351. A printed version of this text, with slight variation from my own transcription, can be found in The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. and transl. by Hall A. R. Hall M. Boas , ix (Madison, Wise, 1973), 181.

Boccone Paolo , Museo difisica e di esperienze (Venice, 1697), 267.