The Science of Describing : Natural History in Renaissance Europe

the science of describing : natural history in renaissance europe

The Science of Describing : Natural History in Renaissance Europe

Editorial Reviews
Review
Harold J. Cook :

"This is a beautifully crafted and erudite book on the formation of the new discipline of natural history and its concepts from the late fifteenth century to the early seventeenth. Ogilvie's emphasis on the importance of description in the development of natural knowledge helps to transform our historical understanding of the origin and content of the scientific revolution."-Harold J. Cook, Professor and Director, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London

Florike Egmond :

"In this wide-ranging survey, Brian Ogilvie sketches the emergence of botany as a discipline in the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, providing a vivid portrayal of the community of early modern European naturalists, their ideas, inventions, traditions, and practices. The `science of describing', which includes visual representation, was at the heart of their innovative approach to natural history, and there was nothing self-evident about the new forms of empiricism that permeated their approach to nature in Europe and far beyond."
-Florike Egmond, coeditor of Bodily Extremities: Preoccupations with the Human Body in Early Modern European Culture

Laurent Pinon :

"What did Renaissance naturalists actually do? How and why did they do it? Starting from those simple but fundamental questions, Brian Ogilvie's strongly learned and penetrating study makes sense of the invention of natural history and the birth of a community devoted to it. In the vividly and elegantly written pages of The Science of Describing, Ogilvie places the practice of description centerstage and offers a superb analysis and interpretation of an unfairly neglected field of early modern culture."-Laurent Pinon, Ecole Normale Sup�rieure, Paris

Paula Findlen :

 "Brian Ogilvie has written a learned and challenging commentary on the emergence of natural history as a Renaissance discipline.  His book offers the most comprehensive account of the growth of natural history in the late fifteenth through early seventeenth centuries and successfully demonstrates how the slow, laborious work of empiricism, conjoined with a humanist vision of knowledge and community, created a project he aptly characterizes as the science of description."-Paula Findlen, Stanford University

Ann Blair :

"This is a wonderfully engaging and richly contextualized study of discipline formation among European naturalists ca. 1490-1630. Ogilvie moves brilliantly back and forth between big questions and specific examples to illuminate the intellectual, material, and social practices of natural history, especially botany, as the field generated and managed an unprecedented explosion of new specimens to describe."-Ann Blair, Harvard University

Book Description
Out of the diverse traditions of medical humanism, classical philology, and natural philosophy, Renaissance naturalists created a new science devoted to discovering and describing plants and animals. Drawing on published natural histories, manuscript correspondence, garden plans, travelogues, watercolors, and drawings, The Science of Describing reconstructs the evolution of this discipline of description through four generations of naturalists. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, naturalists focused on understanding ancient and medieval descriptions of the natural world, but by the mid-sixteenth century naturalists turned toward distinguishing and cataloguing new plant and animal species. To do so, they developed new techniques of observing and recording, created botanical gardens and herbaria, and exchanged correspondence and specimens within an international community. By the early seventeenth century, naturalists began the daunting task of sorting through the wealth of information they had accumulated, putting a new emphasis on taxonomy and classification. Illustrated with woodcuts, engravings, and photographs, The Science of Describing is the first broad interpretation of Renaissance natural history in more than a generation and will appeal widely to an interdisciplinary audience.

The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe,Brian W. Ogilvie,University Of Chicago Press,0226620875,16th century,Europe,General,History,History - General History,Natural history,Nature / Field Guide Books,Renaissance,Science,Science, Renaissance,Science/Mathematics,History of science,Science / History

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