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By explaining how to sire multicolored horses, produce nuts without shells, and create an egg the size of a human head, Giambattista Della Porta's Natural Magic (1559) conveys a fascination with tricks and illusions that makes it a work difficult for historians of science to take seriously. Yet, according to William Eamon, it is in the "how-to" books written by medieval alchemists, magicians, and artisans that modern science has its roots. These compilations of recipes on everything from parlor tricks through medical remedies to wool-dyeing fascinated medieval intellectuals because they promised access to esoteric "secrets of nature." In closely examining this rich but little-known source of literature, Eamon reveals that printing technology and popular culture had as great, if not stronger, an impact on early modern science as did the traditional academic disciplines.
Postal Intelligence connects and situates histories of the post and government intelligence alongside print technology and state power in the wider context of the early modern communications revolution. In the sixteenth century, postal services became central to domestic governance and foreign policy enterprises, extended government reach and surveillance, and offered new control over the public sphere. Rachel Midura focuses on the Tassis family, members of which served as official postmasters to the dukes of Milan, the pope, Spanish kings, and Holy Roman emperors. Using administrative records and family correspondence, she follows the Tassis family, their agents, and their rivals as their influence expanded from northern Italy across Europe. Postal Intelligence shows how postmasters and postmistresses were key players in early modern diplomacy, commerce, and journalism, whose ultimate success depended on both administrative ingenuity and strategic ambiguity.
First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.
Facsimile edition to which is added: Catalogue 62, H.P. KRAUS, The Duveen Collection of Alchemy & Chemistry, supplementing the Bibliotheca Alchemica et Chemica. The Duveen Collection of Balneology.
The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men. Meredith Ray restores the work of these women to our understanding of early modern scientific culture. Her study begins with Caterina Sforza’s alchemical recipes; examines the sixteenth-century vogue for “books of...
Questions of survival and loss bedevil the study of early printed books. Many early publications are not particularly rare, but many have disappeared altogether. Here leading specialists in the field explore different strategies for recovering this lost world of print.
Including all Robert Boyle's published works, this is the first seven volumes of a 14-volume set. All texts are fully annotated and comprehensively indexed. Works originally in Latin are presented in their contemporary English translations.