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Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 57.3 (2002) 355-357



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Book Review

Natural Particulars:
Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe


Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, eds. Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1999. xi, 426 pp. $50.

Historians of the Renaissance still need to question, decipher, and analyze the boundaries and disciplines of science and medicine for the period from 1400 to 1700. This notion forms the basis for Natural Particulars, edited by Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi. More precisely, this book illustrates the possibilities for the study of nature during the Renaissance within the dual framework of what the editors term the traditional approach (based on a deep analysis of texts and individuals’ thoughts) and the revisionist approach (centered on an attempt to place scientific and medical trends within a larger cultural context). These two historiographies, argue Grafton and Siraisi, are not oppositional but operate in tandem, and both are required to achieve a full understanding of this period. Thus, they have gathered thirteen essays, originally presented at a 1995 conference, for inclusion in the present volume. The articles come from scholars representing a variety of fields—including history, philosophy, literature, and art—and are divided into two main sections on “Natural Philosophies” and “Natural Disciplines.” [End Page 355]

Just as the authors represent a number of fields, the essays in this volume also span a vast array of intellectual work. Several of the entries are technical studies of a particular author or text. James Hankins’s contribution, for example, looks at the Timeaus in Renaissance Italy. He explores the revival of Plato’s work during that period and traces its impact on the development of natural philosophy. In particular, he follows the dissemination of manuscript copies of this influential dialogue as well as the commentaries and glosses it inspired. Brian Copenhaver, in contrast, examines the complex relationship between Christianity and the Cabala in the work of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and particularly in his Oration on the Dignity of Man. Copenhaver analyzes Pico’s use of language and the Cabala to explore the claim that magic is both good and natural. In addition, he examines the ways in which, according to Pico, the Cabala helped people understand the Torah.

While these essays argue through textual analysis and the writings of specific individuals, other scholars represented in this volume approach the issue of Renaissance boundaries from a broader perspective. Katherine Park, for example, studies the literature of healing springs in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy. What makes these medical studies unusual is that they come from outside the context of the universities and were written by practicing physicians rather than theoreticians. Park notes that the formation of this subspecialty required these writers, most of whom attended noble or princely patrons, to develop alternative methods of investigating medical phenomena and new ways of demonstrating that their work fit in with natural philosophy. Paula Findlen discusses the development of natural history as a subject suitable for study at universities and worthy of becoming an early modern discipline. In particular, she examines this stage in the formation of a community of natural historians tied together by their interests in spite of a complete lack of agreement concerning the topic or the procedures needed to study that topic. Findlen uses the multiple editions of one book, Pier Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on and translation of Dioscorides’s De materia medica, to define the boundaries of a “botanical republic.” Members of this group are identified through their inclusion in the acknowledgments of Mattioli’s book as well as through the broad patronage and correspondence network he created.

Ultimately, the essays in this volume offer a breadth of analysis and a model for future scholarship. Some of them are highly technical studies of specific ideas and thinkers that help explain the development of disciplines and the interrelationships between areas of study. Others use the writings of specific individuals to make broader arguments concerning the nature...

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