Abstract:

This essay analyzes Robert Burton’s methodological approach to the subject of melancholy and draws comparisons between Burton’s method of inquiry and the 17th-century scientific method at large. Burton’s sources are hence examined and two epistemological lines of influence are singled out, one being characterized by deductive procedures (Galen, Ramus), and the other by inductivism (Hippocrates, pseudo-Hippocratic representation of Democritus). Combined by Burton, these traditions inspired the structure of Burton’s Anatomy, which allowed the concurrence of multiple opinions that mutually interact and automatically correct one another within a cento-like text.