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Introduction Aspects of the Production and Circulation of Early Modern Scientiae: Religion, Natural Philosophy, Secrecy, and Openness

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Introduction Aspects of the Production and Circulation of Early Modern Scientiae: Religion, Natural Philosophy, Secrecy, and Openness Nuncius 31 (2016) 1–9 brill.com/nun Introduction Aspects of the Production and Circulation of Early Modern Scientiae: Religion, Natural Philosophy, Secrecy, and Openness Vittoria Feola University of Padova, Italy and University of Oxford, uk [email protected]; [email protected] This special issue of Nuncius presents six case studies that shed light on aspects of the production and circulation of early modern scientiae. They are the mature reflections stemming from papers which the authors presented at the international conference “Scientiae. Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Mod- ern World,” which was held in Vienna in 2014. As we declare on our home page, Scientiae is “The international research group for intellectual history, 1400–1800. Knowledge in this period (scientia) entailed knowledges (scientiae). Cognitive practices and objects we now take to be discrete – from theology to astronomy, philology to chemistry, tradecraft to law – were, instead, inter- involved. Fascinating in themselves, the period’s intellectual flows also contrast productively with modern systems and hierarchies.”1 The essays aim to contribute to current historiographical debates about the mutually fruitful relations of religion to natural philosophical enquiry on the one hand, and of secretive to open practices in knowledge communication on the other. John Hedley Brooke’s classic work, Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives can be our point of departure, laying out the common historiographical ground from which essays such as those of Suitner and Schilt emerged from the Vienna conference and found their way into this journal.2 1 http://scientiae.co.uk, as viewed on 16 July 2015. 2 John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1991), especially pp. 1–116. The literature on the relationship of sci- ence to religion is vast, and the issue is intimately connected to that of individual freedom. The Faraday Institute, the Liberty Fund, and many such organisations, both academic and scholarly-inclined, provide exhaustive and updated bibliographies on the subject on their websites, together with online resources such as lectures and e-books. See, for instance, http://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/; http://oll.libertyfund.org/(accessed 1 November 2015). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/18253911-03101007 2 feola Since Brooke’s book came out, in 1991, it seems to me that it has become more and more widespread among early modern historians to subscribe to what Brooke called the third theory of the science–religion relationship. A first group of historians and other scholars have been insisting on the eminently conflictual nature of the relationship science-religion. Brooke reminded us of J.W. Draper’s and A.D. White’s catalogues of scientific explanations paired with ridiculous religious assumptions that failed to stand up in their positivistic eyes. These kinds of enterprises reflected the first theory of science-religion relations, namely, the theory of conflict. In opposition to it, others have been arguing for the theory of separation, according to which science and religion are complementary discourses, each catering to specific needs. Thirdly, ever since the influential work of R.K. Merton and C. Webster, it has become increas- ingly common to analyse early modern relations between science and reli- gion in terms of cooperation. Brooke has warned against picking and stick- ing to just one of these three theories, and he underlined instead the need to exercise critical thinking in evaluating on a case by case basis which the- ory would better fit the historian’s analysis. Common sense and moderation, paired with deep scholarship, inform Brooke’s call for not blindly subscribing to one theory only. Twenty-five years later, this issue of Nuncius presents bal- anced approaches to the problem, which reflect our conscious methodological choice of looking at the early modern science-religion relation without pre- conceptions. That relation was mutually fruitful for both, even if the fruits came out of stormy and difficult days, alternating with sunny and peaceful ones. Our point of departure is the observation that something unique pertained to the ways of making scientiae in early modern Western Europe. In order to define that unique quid we believe we ought to demarcate the experimen- tal method that can be observed at work in the early modern period from similar processes elsewhere and/or in other periods. A common denominator which emerges from all the articles in this issue of Nuncius is the realisation that the Humanist- and later the Reformed Church-driven study of the Scrip- tures impacted on and forcefully shaped at least some aspects of the produc- tion of early modern knowledge. Riccarda Suitner’s “Radical Reformation and Medicine in the late Renaissance: The Case of the University of Padua” opens Nuncius by arguing that the philological study of the Bible carried out by a significant sample of people belonging to the radical Reformation (Antitrini- tarianism, Socinianism, Anabaptism, Arianism …) did influence early modern medical theories, thus forcing us to realise that further research is needed on this topic. Suitner begins to address the issue by considering the clandestine dissemination of Reformed doctrines at the University of Padua in the second Nuncius 31 (2016) 1–9.
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