1543 and All That : Image and Word, Change and Continuity in the Proto-Scientific Revolution

Australia and New Zealand boast an active community of scholars working in the field of history, philosophy and social studies of science. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Seien ce aims to provide a distinctive publication of essays on a connected outlet for their work. Each volume comprises a group theme, edited by an Australian or a New Zealander with special expertise in that particular area. In each volume, a majority of the contributors is from Australia or New Zealand. Contributions from elsewhere are by no means ruled out, however, and are indeed actively encouraged wherever appropriate to the balance of the volume in question. Earlier volumes in the series have been welcomed for significantly advancing the discussion of the topics they have dealt with. I believe that the present volume will be greeted equally enthusiastically by readers in many parts of the world. R. W Horne General Editor Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Frontispiece. Andreas Vesalius, Sixth Plate ofthe Muscles, woodcut, designed by Jan Steven van Kalkar, from De humani corporis fabrica (Basel, 1543). (Photo. Scientific Illustration; repr. by kind permission of the University of New South Wales Library. ) In: GUY FREELAND, 'Introduction: In Praise of Toothing-Stones' Fig. 1. Michael Esson, Vesalian Interpretation 3 (1992). (Repr. by kind permission ofthe Artist. ) Fig. 2. Reliefs, University of Padua. The focus of this volume, the Proto-Scientific Revolution, is that distinctive period, essentially High Renaissance in character, which paved the way for the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. The epicentre of this important period is 1543, the annus mirabilis which saw the publication, amongst other seminal works, of Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, and Vesalius' magnificently illustrated On the Fabric of the Human Body. A substantial literature exists on the Copernican Revolution, but the present original collection of papers, accessible to the non-specialist reader, breaks new ground, not only in bringing the works of Copernicus and Vesalius together, but by placing them within the context of the Proto-Scientific Revolution as a whole, the Renaissance of the arts, and the Reformation. In addition, the book, while noting discontinuities, pin-points linkages between the Proto-Scientific Revolution and the periods preceding and following it. As the volume focuses on an age which experienced the impact of both linear perspective and movable type printing, emphasis is placed upon the changing nature and roles of both image and word Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction: In Praise of Toothing-Stones....Pages 1-15 Vision and Visualisation in the Illustration of Anatomy and Astronomy from Leonardo to Galileo....Pages 17-51 Diagrammatic Reasoning and Modelling in the Imagination: The Secret Weapons of the Scientific Revolution....Pages 53-115 Body, Mind, and Order: Local Memory and the Control of Mental Representations in Medieval and Renaissance Sciences of Self....Pages 117-150 On the Stretch: Hobbes, Mechanics and the Shaking Palsy....Pages 151-187 The Lamp in the Temple: Copernicus and the Demise of a Medieval Ecclesiastical Cosmology....Pages 189-270 Copernicus, Printing and the Politics of Knowledge....Pages 271-289 1543—The Year that Copernicus Didn’t Predict the Phases of Venus....Pages 291-331 The Natural, the Supernatural, and the Occult in the Scholastic Universe....Pages 333-355 Early English Reformers and Magical Healing....Pages 357-374 Bellarmine to Foscarini on Copernicanism: A Theologian’s Response....Pages 375-393 Back Matter....Pages 395-405