Science in the Age of Baroque

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vi

   PDF

2. Baroque Modes and the Production of Knowledge

   • Ofer Gal, Raz Chen-Morris

   Pages 1-9

3. Order

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

      PDF

   2. What Was the Relation of Baroque Culture to the Trajectory of Early Modern Natural Philosophy?

      • John A. Schuster

      Pages 13-45

   3. “Bent and Directed Towards Him”: A Stylistic Analysis of Kircher’s Sunflower Clock

      • Koen Vermeir

      Pages 47-75

   4. From Divine Order to Human Approximation: Mathematics in Baroque Science

      • Ofer Gal

      Pages 77-96

4. Vision

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 97-97

      PDF

   2. “The Quality of Nothing:” Shakespearean Mirrors and Kepler’s Visual Economy of Science

      • Raz Chen-Morris

      Pages 99-118

   3. Agostino Scilla: A Baroque Painter in Pursuit of Science

      • Paula Findlen

      Pages 119-159

   4. What Exactly Was Torricelli’s “Barometer?”

      • J. B. Shank

      Pages 161-195

   5. William Harvey and the Way of the Artisan

      • Alan Salter

      Pages 197-213

5. Excess

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 215-215

      PDF

6. Excess

   1. Crossing the Pillars of Hercules: Francis Bacon, the Scientific Revolution and the New World

      • John Gascoigne

      Pages 217-237

   2. The Hive and the Pendulum: Universal Metrology and Baroque Science

      • Nicholas Dew

      Pages 239-255

   3. Chymical Philosophy and Boyle’s Incongruous Philosophical Chymistry

      • Victor D. Boantza

      Pages 257-284

   4. The Simulation of Nature and the Dissimulation of the Law on a Baroque Stage: Galileo and the Church Revisited

      • Rivka Feldhay

      Pages 285-303

7. Back Matter

   Pages 305-313

   PDF

This volume examines the New Science of the 17th century in the context of Baroque culture, analysing its emergence as an integral part of the high culture of the period. The collected essays explore themes common to the new practices of knowledge production and the rapidly changing culture surrounding them, as well as the obsessions, anxieties and aspirations they share, such as the foundations of order, the power and peril of mediation and the conflation of the natural and the artificial. The essays also take on the historiographical issues involved: the characterization of culture in general and culture of knowledge in particular; the use of generalizations like ‘Baroque’ and the status of such categories; and the role of these in untangling the historical complexities of the tumultuous 17th century. The canonical protagonists of the ‘Scientific Revolution’ are considered, and so are some obscure and suppressed figures: Galileo side by side with Scheiner;Torricelli together with Kircher; Newton as well as Scilla.    The coupling of Baroque and Science defies both the still-triumphalist historiographies of the Scientific Revolution and the slight embarrassment that the Baroque represents for most cultural-national histories of Western Europe. It signals a methodological interest in tensions and dilemmas rather than self-affirming narratives of success and failure, and provides an opportunity for reflective critique of our historical categories which is valuable in its own right.  ​

• Newton
• Scientific Revolution
• baroque and science
• baroque culture
• foundations of order
• new science of the 17th century

• , Unit for History & Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

  Ofer Gal

• , Unit for Interdisciplinary Studies, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

  Raz Chen-Morris

Policies and ethics