DOCSLIB.ORG

Archives of Nature: Revisiting Aldrovandi's Studio

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Archives of Nature: Revisiting Aldrovandi's Studio Wesleyan University The Honors College Archives of Nature: Revisiting Aldrovandi’s Studio by Isabel Sara Steckel Class of 2019 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors from the College of Letters and with Departmental Honors in Italian Studies Middletown, Connecticut April, 2019 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS _____________________________________________3 LIST OF FIGURES ___________________________________________________5 INTRODUCTION ____________________________________________________6 A Methodological Note_____________________________________________13 CHAPTER ONE: A Language of Nature: The Linguistic Traces of Sixteenth-Century Historia Naturalis_____________________________________17 I. Epistemological Decorum: Performing Natural History __________________22 II. The Bolognese Aristotle in Translation______________________________25 III. The Emergence of a Disciplinary Community________________________29 CHAPTER TWO: Monstrous Flowers Hiding Under the Bed: Tracing European Colonialism in Aldrovandi’s Cabinet of Curiosities__________________________37 I. The Pliny of His Time ____________________________________________39 II. Collecting Naturalia in the Shadow of Colonialism ____________________45 III. Curiosity in The Monstrorum Historia: Margins, Context, and Power______50 CHAPTER THREE: Structures of Knowledge: The (De)Spatialization of l’Archivio Aldrovandi ________________________________________________58 I. The Politics of Space: From Studio to Galleria_________________________60 II. Ordering Codes and Exclusions: The Eighteenth-Century Episteme ________66 III. Digital Architecture: The Space of No Space _________________________72 IV. A Technoscientific Collection: Constructing the Modest Witness_________78 V. Hopeful Disunity: Realigning the Technical and the Political_____________85 CONCLUSION______________________________________________________88 BIBLIOGRAPHY ___________________________________________________90 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to extend my first thanks to my advisor, Professor Joseph Fitzpatrick, who was an indispensable mentor through every step of this project. I always left our meetings with far more questions than answers, which in this context, was an amazing and empowering thing. To my loving family, Mom, Dad, and Halle – thank you for making Berkeley a home that I always want to return to. To all of my wonderful and supportive friends who have never hesitated to offer a hug or an escape from writing. And to my housemates of 77 Home, thank you for creating a space of laughter even amidst the stress. I am grateful for the College of Letters faculty and students for providing an environment where creative, unconstrained thinking is rigorously encouraged and facilitated. And, for the department of Italian Studies, thank you for fostering my passion for Italian. This project would not have taken shape as smoothly as it did if not for the resources provided by the College of Letters’ Lankford Memorial Fund and the Center for the Humanities whose support allowed me to travel to Bologna over my winter break to explore Aldrovandi’s archives first-hand. Also, to the accommodating Italian librarians at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna and the Archiginnasio, thank you for your endless patience and invaluable knowledge of the archive. And lastly, thank you to the countless scholars and professors whose interests and articulations have guided me to my own. 3 To my grandfather, Marty Steckel, For teaching me the value of intellectual curiosity. 4 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Frontispiece of the Ornithologiae________________________________18 Figure 2: Giardino dei Semplici_________________________________________49 Figure 3: Antonietta Gonzales from the Monstrorum historia__________________56 Figure 4: Plan for Aldrovandi’s studio____________________________________63 Figure 5: Plan for the Palazzo Poggi _____________________________________71 Figure 6: BRAHMS Venn diagram _______________________________________74 Figure 7: L’archivio Aldrovandi on BRAHMS online_________________________77 5 INTRODUCTION The International Center for Photography's 2008 exhibition Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art offers a way of thinking about the idea of “the archive.” In the words of the prolific curator, Okwui Enwezor, the ICP exhibit was organized to spotlight the “the archival impulse as a way of shaping and constructing the meaning of images.”1 Many works in the exhibition call attention to the techniques of arrangement and selection, of inclusion and exclusion, that govern archival aesthetics and practices. As an archive of archival representations, the exhibit functions as a self-referential exploration into “the ways in which artists have appropriated, interpreted, reconfigured, and interrogated archival structures and materials.”2 The gallery walls have been covered with sheets of plain industrial plywood. The exhibition space looks like the interior of a storage shed or a shipping container packed with displays that take many forms: physical archives arranged by unusual cataloguing methods, imagined biographies of fictitious persons, collections of found and anonymous photographs, and film versions of historic photographic albums. A group of pictures called “The Fae Richards Photo Archive” (1993-1996), produced by Zoe Leonard in collaboration with the filmmaker Cheryl Dunye, professes to document the life of an African-American actress from her childhood during the civil rights era. The substance of the narrative seems to ring true; but Fae Richards herself never existed. Her life was staged for the contemporary camera. Genuineness and forgery are deliberately confused, thereby putting pressure on the 1 Okwui Enwezor, media release of Archive Fever, Steidl Publication, 2008, https://www.icp.org/files/exhibition/credits/sites/default/files/exhibition_pdfs/Archive_PRESS.PDF. 2 Ibid. 6 historical authenticity that is typically expected from archival collections. In another piece, Christian Boltanski's Reserve-Detective III (1987) stages an installation of cardboard boxes of various sizes with black-and-white photographic portraits clipped to them, labeled with handwritten dates and stacked on shelves. The piece approximates the archetypal physical arrangement of an archive – that old, dusty collection space where one expects to uncover the legendary, primordial secrets of historical documents. And yet, the installation’s caption discloses the installation’s many forgeries: the boxes are empty, the photographs, though found archival documents, have no material association with this particular archive, the labels are pure semantics with no corresponding substance within the box. The standard idea of the archive holds only as long as you don’t expect to find anything in the box. By simply choosing, repositioning, and titling the materials, Boltanksi foregrounds the archivist’s active role – through appraisal, accessioning, selection, and description – in constructing the archive. These works consider the archive a living thing that is formed by its localized context, by the impressions associated with it. While Archive Fever is concerned with the uses of archival documents in contemporary art collections, the project employs and displays the organizing logics of archival practice more generally. In other words, artistic manipulations of the archive suggest not only a serious interest in the archival form as attributed to photographic and filmic media, but also a larger meditation on the changing and unstable nature of archives more broadly. In The Order of Things, Foucault argues that an archive is not a physical storehouse or collection of documents and objects; rather, it makes up “the law of what can be said, the system that governs the 7 appearance of statements as unique events.”3 An archive, in this sense, is intangible and invisible, a taxonomic abstraction that both bounds and orders the collected products of culture. Archives are thus continually reordered and restructured according to whichever systems of knowledge hold power in a given moment. This thesis attends to the life and afterlives of the archive of polymath Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) – an early modern Italian naturalist, the first professor of natural history appointed in Italy, and “the Father of natural history studies.”4 His fame and authority were linked to his museum of natural curiosities, which was open to the learned and curious men of Europe. Aldrovandi’s accumulation of natural artifacts produced an archival history of a sixteenth-century naturalist’s world view. Towards the end of his life, Aldrovandi dedicated much of his time to cataloguing the contents of his encyclopedic collection. By 1595, he could write: “Today in my microcosm, you can see more than 18,000 different things, among which 7,000 in fifteen volumes, dried and pasted, 3,000 of which I had painted as if alive.”5 From his fragments, Aldrovandi managed to shed light on nature’s mysteries by bringing together what he understood to be all of nature, proudly proclaiming his collection an “eighth wonder of the world.”6 The purpose of the studio was to display all of nature in one space, to collect the wonders of the world as a means to possess and know them. While Aldrovandi was not unique in his encyclopedic aims, this discursive 3 Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Pantheon
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Exotic World of Carolus Clusius 1526-1609 and a Reconstruction of the Clusius Garden
    The Netherlandish humanist Carolus Clusius (Arras 1526- Leiden 1609) is one of the most important European the exotic botanists of the sixteenth century. He is the author of innovative, internationally famous botanical publications, the exotic worldof he introduced exotic plants such as the tulip and potato world of in the Low Countries, and he was advisor of princes and aristocrats in various European countries, professor and director of the Hortus botanicus in Leiden, and central figure in a vast European network of exchanges. Carolus On 4 April 2009 Leiden University, Leiden University Library, The Hortus botanicus and the Scaliger Institute 1526-1609 commemorate the quatercentenary of Clusius’ death with an exhibition The Exotic World of Carolus Clusius 1526-1609 and a reconstruction of the Clusius Garden. Clusius carolus clusius scaliger instituut clusius all3.indd 1 16-03-2009 10:38:21 binnenwerk.qxp 16-3-2009 11:11 Pagina 1 Kleine publicaties van de Leidse Universiteitsbibliotheek Nr. 80 binnenwerk.qxp 16-3-2009 11:12 Pagina 2 binnenwerk.qxp 16-3-2009 11:12 Pagina 3 The Exotic World of Carolus Clusius (1526-1609) Catalogue of an exhibition on the quatercentenary of Clusius’ death, 4 April 2009 Edited by Kasper van Ommen With an introductory essay by Florike Egmond LEIDEN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY LEIDEN 2009 binnenwerk.qxp 16-3-2009 11:12 Pagina 4 ISSN 0921-9293, volume 80 This publication was made possible through generous grants from the Clusiusstichting, Clusius Project, Hortus botanicus and The Scaliger Institute, Leiden. Web version: https://disc.leidenuniv.nl/view/exh.jsp?id=exhubl002 Cover: Jacob de Monte (attributed), Portrait of Carolus Clusius at the age of 59.
    [Show full text]
  • This Illustration Provided for the Journal's Cover
    Banisteria, Number 24, 2004 © 2004 by the Virginia Natural History Society The Earliest Illustrations and Descriptions of the Cardinal David W. Johnston 5219 Concordia Street Fairfax, Virginia 22032 ABSTRACT In the 16th century Northern Cardinals were trapped in Mexico, then sent as caged birds because of their beauty and song to various places in Europe and south Africa. The Italian, Aldrovandi, obtained a caged bird in Italy and with a woodcut, published the first known illustration of a cardinal in 1599. The great English naturalist, Francis Willughby, in conjunction with John Ray, published a painting of a cardinal in 1678, and the eccentric and prolific collector, James Petiver, included an illustrated caged cardinal from south Africa in his monumental Opera (1767). Mark Catesby was the first artist to paint a cardinal (probably in Virginia) with a natural background (c. 1731). Aldrovandi's woodcut and description in 1599 represent the earliest known mention of the Northern Cardinal. Key words: Cardinalis cardinalis, history, illustrations, Northern Cardinal. To an ornithological historian it is exciting and Grosbeak from the Indies.” This woodcut was the first rewarding to be able to trace the earliest report and published image of the species (Simpson, 1985). illustration of any bird. Such has been the case for the bird A translation of Aldrovandi’s Latin description reads: now called the Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis). In the 16th century the cardinal was a favorite cage bird “A bird of this sort, pictured in the guise of life, was among Europeans, long before it was reported by English sent to me several days ago on the command of his serene colonists in its North American range.
    [Show full text]
  • Carl Linnaeus's Botanical Paper Slips (1767–1773)
    Intellectual History Review ISSN: 1749-6977 (Print) 1749-6985 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rihr20 Carl Linnaeus's botanical paper slips (1767–1773) Isabelle Charmantier & Staffan Müller-Wille To cite this article: Isabelle Charmantier & Staffan Müller-Wille (2014) Carl Linnaeus's botanical paper slips (1767–1773), Intellectual History Review, 24:2, 215-238, DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2014.914643 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2014.914643 © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. Published online: 02 Jun 2014. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 2111 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 6 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rihr20 Intellectual History Review, 2014 Vol. 24, No. 2, 215–238, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2014.914643 Carl Linnaeus’s botanical paper slips (1767–1773) Isabelle Charmantier and Staffan Müller-Wille Department of History, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK* The development of paper-based information technologies in the early modern period is a field of enquiry that has lately benefited from extensive studies by intellectual historians and historians of science.1 How scholars coped with ever-increasing amounts of empirical knowledge presented in print and manuscript – leading to the so-called early modern “information overload”–is now being increasingly analysed and understood.2 In this paper we will turn to an example at the close of the early modern period. Towards the very end of his academic career, the Swedish nat- uralist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) – best known today for his “sexual” system of plant classifi- cation and his binomial nomenclature – used little paper slips of a standard size to process information on plants and animals that reached him on a daily basis.
    [Show full text]
  • A Prodigious Namer of Nature
    COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS “Chymistry”, as prac- tised by Robert Boyle and other natural philosophers, was then evolving from NHM LONDON/SPL medieval alchemy to modern chemistry. It sought the transmu- tation of base metals into gold even as it was The Wonderful Mr Willughby: harnessed for applica- The First True tions such as weapons Ornithologist manufacture. Eventu- TIM BIRKHEAD ally, Willughby and Bloomsbury (2018) Ray criss-crossed England and Wales on their birding and plant-hunting expeditions. Around 1662, they set themselves an ambitious goal: observing, describing and classifying all species. They felt that both the literature and the nomenclature sowed con- fusion. Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner’s History of Animals (1551–58), for instance, mixed ancient knowledge with observation. By contrast, Ray and Willughby grounded their system in precise anatomical descrip- tion, distinguishing between even closely related species. Beginning with British spe- cies and extending to mainland Europe, they A peacock and (below) a established a taxonomy that would be built dodo from Francis Willughby’s on by centuries of naturalists, including Carl 1676 Ornithologiae libri tres. Linnaeus in the mid-eighteenth century. Dividing birds into land and water fowl, they NATURAL HISTORY deployed attributes such as beak shape to create a branching classification key. Willughby thrived on collaboration, and used his wealth to enable it. In 1662, Ray A prodigious resigned his college fellowship, rather than subscribe to the Act of Uniformity passed by Parliament to fortify Charles II’s newly restored monarchy. Willughby invited his namer of nature mentor into his household. The next year, Willughby was elected an “original fellow” of the Royal Society, and he and Ray, with Elizabeth Yale relishes a biography of a seventeenth- Ray’s students Philip Skippon and Nathaniel century polymath with a notable gift for collaboration.
    [Show full text]
  • Sixteenth-Century Tomatoes in Europe: Who Saw Them, What Did They Look Like, and Where Did They Come From?
    Sixteenth-century tomatoes in Europe: who saw them, what did they look like, and where did they come from? Tinde van Andel ( [email protected] ) Naturalis Biodiversity Center https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4951-1894 Rutger Vos Naturalis Biodiversity Center https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9254-7318 Ewout Michels Leiden University Anastasia Stefanaki Wageningen University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6393-9416 Research Article Keywords: Renaissance, Botany, Solanum lycopersicum, historical herbaria, molecular biology Posted Date: July 23rd, 2021 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-715398/v1 License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read Full License Page 1/26 Abstract Background Soon after the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the rst tomatoes were presented as curiosities to the European royals and drew the attention of sixteenth-century Italian naturalists. Despite of their scientic interest in this New World crop, most Renaissance botanists did not specify where these ‘golden apples’ or ‘pomi d’oro’ came from. The debate on the rst European tomatoes and their origin is often hindered by erroneous dating, botanical misidentications and inaccessible historical sources. The discovery of a tomato specimen in the sixteenth-century ‘En Tibi herbarium’ kept at Leiden, the Netherlands led to claims that its DNA would reveal the ‘original’ taste and pest resistance of early tomatoes. Methods Recent digitization efforts greatly facilitate research on historic botanical sources. Here we provide an overview of the ten remaining sixteenth-century tomato specimens, early descriptions and 13 illustrations. Several were never published before, revealing what these tomatoes looked like, who saw them, and where they came from.
    [Show full text]
  • Botanical Illustrations Emily N
    Wonders of Nature and Artifice Art and Art History Fall 2017 Botanical Illustrations Emily N. Roush '21, Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/wonders_exhibit Part of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons, Fine Arts Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Industrial and Product Design Commons, and the Intellectual History Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Roush, Emily N., "Botanical Illustrations" (2017). Wonders of Nature and Artifice. 16. https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/wonders_exhibit/16 This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution. Cupola permanent link: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/wonders_exhibit/16 This open access student research paper is brought to you by The uC pola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The uC pola. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Botanical Illustrations Abstract Botanical illustrations were an integral facet of botany in the Renaissance era. Many naturalists and physicians studied plants in collections to observe and record the naturalia. In many collections, specimens were displayed for visitors to draw and then create illustrations or prints. With an illustration, detail in plants could be captured and visually understood instead of learning through text. The great feature of illustrations was the fact that the specimens could be exotic yet still studied. Kusukawa says, “Pictures enabled scholars to access unobtainable objects, build knowledge of rare objects over time, and study them long after the live specimens had died away.” The illustrations were paired with text information about the plant and often distributed in herbal volumes.
    [Show full text]
  • Ulisse Aldrovandi and Antonio Vallisneri: the Italian Contribution to Knowledge of Neuropterous Insects Between the 16Th and the Early 18Th Centuries*
    Ann. Mus. civ. St. nat. Ferrara Vol. 8 2005 [2007] pp. 9-26 ISSN 1127-4476 Ulisse Aldrovandi and Antonio Vallisneri: the Italian contribution to knowledge of Neuropterous Insects between the 16th and the early 18th centuries* Rinaldo Nicoli Aldini 1· 2 1) lstituto di Entomologia e Patologia vegetale, Facolta di Agraria, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via E­ milia Parmense 84, 1-29100 Piacenza (Italy); 2) Scienze degli Alimenti, Polo Scientifico-Didattico di Cesena del­ la Facolta di Agraria, Alma Mater Studiorum, Universita degli Studi di Bologna, Piazza Goidanich 60, 1-47023 Cesena (Italy), e-mail: [email protected] The oldest evidence of neuropterous insects in Italian scientific literature dates back at least to the 15th-16th centuries and regards antlions. Documents concerning antlions and green lacewings are present in the outstanding corpus of watercolour illustrations of insects built up in the 16th cen­ tury by the great naturalist from Bologna, Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), and then reproduced in his work De animalibus insectis (1602). His illustrations of some adult antlions and a green lace­ wing are among the earliest to be found in printed works. Between the 16th and the early 18th cen­ turies, other Italian authors mention or deal with lacewings, mainly the outstanding scientist from Reggio, Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730), who published bionomical and behavioural observations on antlions and green lacewings; he was the first to publish the life cycle of an antlion and to describe and illustrate the stalked eggs of green lacewings. Key words - entomology, neuropterology, history, Italy, antlions, green lacewings, early authors.
    [Show full text]
  • The Museum of Building Leans It Is Not Born from Collections Accumulated in the Time
    Conference Communicating University Museums. Awareness and Action. University Museums Today. Uppsala, September 26th, 2005 Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna The Valorisation and communication of the university scientific patrimony. The characteristics of the Palazzo Poggi museum at the University of Bologna The University of Bologna wishes to express its gratitude and to thank the organisers for this invitation to take part in a conference that sees representatives from many prestigious European universities gathered together to discuss a subject which, through a reciprocal exchange of experience, will contribute to the intensification of contacts and relations between our universities. The title of my talk, “The Valorisation and communication of the university scientific patrimony”, aims to contribute to the central theme of this conference, starting from the specific case of the Palazzo Poggi Museum, the main history of science museum at the University of Bologna. A university museum is not only a place for the preservation of ancient scientific instruments. It is, above all, a centre for scientific research, the promotion of culture, exhibition activities, and support for the didactic activities of the University and schools in the region. It is a place where new forms of scientific communication are set up, where the traditional separation between science and humanistic studies finds a common aim. Our mission is certainly not a simple one, and it is rendered more difficult by an ever-increasing lack of public funds. It is a mission, however, that the university Museum of Palazzo Poggi has followed for five years with results that, I believe, have been more than satisfactory.
    [Show full text]
  • Le Piante Di Francesco Calzolari
    WBAWBA Monographs I LeLe piantepiante di Francesco CCalzolarialzolari DanieleDaniele ZaniniZanini WBA MonographsMonographs Vol.Vol. I LeLe piantepiante di FFrancescorancesco CCalzolarialzolari ISSNISSN 2239-85542239-8554 ISISBNBN 9978-88-906379-0-278-88-906379-0-2 SOMMARIOSOMMARIO Presentazione 7 Prefazioni 9 © CopyrightCopyright 2011 World BiodiversitBiodiversityy Association onluonluss IntroduzioneIntroduzione 13 ComitatoComitato SScientificientifi co eded EditorialeEditoriale WBA: Barrientos-Lozano Ludivina, Ciudad Victoria (México(México)) /DULQDVFHQ]DVFLHQWL¿FDQHO&LQTXHFHQWR Casale Achille, Sassari (Italia)(Italia) Daccordi Mauro, Verona (Italia(Italia)) La vita 2727 GiacGiachinohino Pier Mauro, Torino, (Ita(Italia)lia) GuidolinGuidolin Laura, Padova (Italia(Italia)) KlKleukerseukers Roy, LeidenLeiden (Olanda)(Olanda) LaLa TTheriacaheriaca 3131 Massa Bruno, Palermo, (Italia)(Italia) Onore Giovanni, Quito (Ecuador)(Ecuador) L’L’HortusHortus simplicium OsellaOsella BartolomeoBartolomeo Giuseppe, L’AquiL’Aquilala (Italia)(Italia) Peck Stewart B., Ottawa (Canada)(Canada) /DÀ/DÀRUXODRUXOD Roig FidelFidel AAlejandro,lejandro, MendozaMendoza (Argentina(Argentina)) SalSalgadogado Costas José Maria, Leon (Spa(Spagna)gna) ,O9LDJJLRGL0RQWH%DOGRGHOODPDJQL¿,O9LDJJLRGL0RQWH%DOGRGHOODPDJQL¿FDFLWWDGL9HURQDFDFLWWDGL9HURQD 60 TTretiachretiach Mauro, Trieste (Italia)(Italia) 5DSSRUWLHSLVWRODULFRQ8OLVVH$OGURYDQGL5DSSRUWLHSLVWRODULFRQ8OLVVH$OGURYDQGL Direttore eeditoriale:ditoriale: Pier Mauro GiachinoGiachino ProProgettogetto eeditoriale:ditoriale:
    [Show full text]
  • Ulisse Aldrovandi's Color Sensibility
    1 Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Color Sensibility: Natural History, Language and the Lay Color Practices of Renaissance Virtuosi Valentina Pugliano University of Cambridge [email protected]∗ Abstract Famed for his collection of drawings of naturalia and his thoughts on the relationship between painting and natural knowledge, it now appears that the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) also pondered specifically color and pigments, compiling not only lists and diagrams of color terms but also a full-length unpublished manuscript entitled De coloribus or Trattato dei colori. Introducing these writings for the first time, this article portrays a scholar not so much interested in the materiality of pigment production, as in the cultural history of hues. It argues that these writings constituted an effort to build a language of color, in the sense both of a standard nomenclature of hues and of a lexicon, a dictionary of their denotations and connotations as documented in the literature of ancients and moderns. This language would serve the naturalist in his artistic patronage and his natural historical studies, where color was considered one of the most reliable signs for the correct identification of specimens, and a guarantee of accuracy in their illustration. Far from being an exception, Aldrovandi’s ‘color sensiblity’ spoke of that of his university-educated nature- loving peers. Keywords Ulisse Aldrovandi – De coloribus – color terminology – uroscopy – scientific illustration ∗ University of Cambridge, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge C2 3RH, UK. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Miranda Stanyon, Caroline Vout, Bernardo Zacka and the editors, for their help in revising this article.
    [Show full text]
  • Historia Piscium (1686) and Its Sources 305
    Historia Piscium (1686) and Its Sources 305 Chapter 9 Historia Piscium (1686) and Its Sources Sachiko Kusukawa Anyone who wants to know who the author of the Historia piscium was should look up the preface of another book written by the same author, the Ornithology (1676).1 Thus began John Ray’s preface to Historia piscium. The title page of the book indeed declared: ‘The armigerous Francis Willughby’s four books on the history of fishes, published by the command and at the expense of the Royal Society of London.’ The publication of this book was the first venture that the Royal Society directly took financial and logistical responsibility for— in the words of the Secretary, Francis Aston (1644–1715, FRS 16782), it was ‘the first thing of that nature we ever went about’.3 The title page ended: ‘John Ray of the Royal Society reviewed [recognovit], brought together [coaptavit] and supplemented [supplevit] the entire work and also put together all of the first and second books.’ It indicates Ray’s role as the author of the first two books and a compiler and editor of the rest. Ray’s substantial intellectual input into this book as well as the Ornithology was well documented by Charles Raven many years ago.4 Unlike the Ornithology, however, the Historia piscium offi- cially had the support of the Royal Society, and other fellows of the Society actively contributed to it.5 Moreover, the Historia piscium drew extensively on earlier and contemporary works on fishes. The aim of this chapter is to reassess the Historia piscium as a product of many different sources, and to understand the variety of practices of reading, note-taking, compilation, and observation that went into a monumental publication of the natural history of fishes towards the end of the seventeenth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and His Fact-Gathering Strategies
    Working Papers on The Nature of Evidence: How Well Do ‘Facts’ Travel? No. 36/08 Indexing Nature: Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and his Fact-Gathering Strategies Staffan Müller-Wille & Sara Scharf © Staffan Müller-Wille & Sara Scharf University of Exeter & University of Toronto Jan 2009 “The Nature of Evidence: How Well Do ‘Facts’ Travel?” is funded by The Leverhulme Trust and the ESRC at the Department of Economic History, London School of Economics. For further details about this project and additional copies of this, and other papers in the series, go to: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collection/economichistory/ Series Editor: Dr. Jon Adams Department of Economic History London School of Economics Houghton Street London, WC2A 2AE Tel: +44 (0) 20 7955 6727 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7955 7730 Indexing Nature: Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and His Fact-Gathering Strategies1 Staffan Müller-Wille2 & Sara Scharf3 Abstract Early modern naturalists were faced with what has been termed the ‘first bio-information crisis’. A key figure in resolving this crisis was the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1788). This paper will focus on Linnaeus’s day-to-day working routines on the basis of manuscript material held at the Linnean Society (London). What this material shows is that Linnaeus had to manage a conflict between the need to bring factual information into a fixed order for purposes of retrieval, and the need to integrate new information into that order. A way out of this dilemma was to keep information on particular subjects on separate sheets, which could be reshuffled and complemented by additional sheets.
    [Show full text]