Possessing Nature

Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy

By: Paula Findlen

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Paperback | 2 April 1996 | Edition Number 1

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449 Pages

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2.26 x 1.52 x 0.31

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In 1500 few Europeans regarded nature as a subject worthy of inquiry. Yet fifty years later the first museums of natural history had appeared in Italy, dedicated to the marvels of nature. Italian patricians, their curiosity fueled by new voyages of exploration and the humanist rediscovery of nature, created vast collections as a means of knowing the world and used this knowledge to their greater glory.

Drawing on extensive archives of visitors' books, letters, travel journals, memoirs, and pleas for patronage, Paula Findlen reconstructs the lost social world of Renaissance and Baroque museums. She follows the new study of natural history as it moved out of the universities and into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific societies, religious orders, and princely courts. Findlen argues convincingly that natural history as a discipline blurred the border between the ancients and the moderns, between collecting in order to recover ancient wisdom and the development of new textual and experimental scholarship. Her vivid account reveals how the scientific revolution grew from the constant mediation between the old forms of knowledge and the new.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction History Regional & National History European History Nature & The Natural World Earliest Times to Present Day Early Modern History from 1450 to 1700 Specific Events & Topics in History Social & Cultural History Reference, Information & Interdisciplinary Subjects Museology & Heritage Studies Science

Science in General History of Science General & World History

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Photo Credits
Introduction	p. 1
Locating the Museum
"A World of Wonders in One Closet Shut"	p. 17
Searching for Paradigms	p. 48
Sites of Knowledge	p. 97
Laboratories of Nature
Pilgrimages of Science	p. 155
Fare Esperienza	p. 194
Museums of Medicine	p. 241
Economies of Exchange
Inventing the Collector	p. 293
Patrons, Brokers, and Strategies	p. 346
Epilogue: The Old and the New	p. 393
Bibliography	p. 409
Index	p. 433
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Possessing Nature

Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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