History 291 Home Page

Scholasticism

• Medieval medical text showing a page from a late-13th century translation of a work by Hippocrates. (SBB)

The Renaissance: Humanism and the Technical Arts

• Detail from Raphael's School of Athens with Plato and Aristotle (SBB)

• Printing

• A typical print shop. (SBB)
• Another print shop. (SBB)
• A Durer sketch of a printer. (SBB) Note that the threads go the wrong way on his press
• A page from Aldus's press. (SBB)
• A printed page from Pliny's Natural History with hand illumination. (SBB)
• An early Venetian printed Euclid. (SBB)

• Art, Architecture, and Perspective

• A page from one of Leonardo's sketchbooks. (CAR)
• Da Vinci's sketch of projectile paths depending on mortar angle. (CAR)
• Masaccio's Trinity. (CAR)
• Albrecht Durer's use of a grid to achieve proper projection. (SI)
• Paolo Ucello's sketch for a chalice rendered in perspective. (CAR)
• Durer's depiction of a well-armored rhino. (SI)
• Galileo and Perspective, a project at CUNY
• A special exhibition on Renaissance Engineering by the Museum of the History of Science in Florence

• Heavy Machinery

• Mining machines from Agricola (George Bauer). (SI)
• Water-driven devices. (SS)
• Hydraulically-actuated paper mill. (SS)
• Device for figuring cannon elevation angle. (SS)

• Mapping

• The medieval-style T-O map
• A map from the 1482 Ulm printed edition of Ptolemy
• A portolan chart: note the compass roses and bearings present in the map.
• A Mercator-projection map of the world. (CAR)
• A map whose frame supplies an ironic commentary. (CAR)

Astronomy and the Copernican Revolution

• Apparent retrograde motion of Mars. (CR)
• Explanation of retrograde motion under a Ptolemaic system with epicycles. (CR)
• Explanation of retrograde motion in the Copernican heliocentric system. (CR)
• Why there should be stellar parallax in a heliocentric system, unless the stars are very far away. (CR)
• An astrolabe, with Arabic lettering, from either the 9th or the 13th century. (AI)
• An armillary sphere. (AI)
• Tycho's cosmography. (SS)
• Comparative cosmographies. (SI)
• Kepler's cosmography of nested solids. (SI)

Alchemy

• An illustration mapping the Zodiac to parts of the human body. (SI)
• Robert Fludd's picture of macro- and microcosmic correspondences.
• An alchemist demonstrating a theory of correspondences. (CAR)
• The mystical cave of the Illuminati. (CAR)
• An alchemist's laboratory. (CAR)
• Durer's Melancolia I. (CAR)

Anatomy

• Medieval anatomical text depicting a dissection. (SS)
• Medieval anatomical text showing the body's various systems. (SS)
• A page from Mondino's textbook showing a dissection in progress. (AM)
• Some of Leonardo Da Vinci's anatomical sketches. (CAR)
• Leonardo's sketch of a fetus in an opened uterus
• Da Vinci's schematic sketch of the anatomy of the eye
• Frontispiece to Vesalius. (SBB)
• Skeleton from Vesalius's De Fabrica Corporis Humani. (SS)
• Two more skeletons from Vesalius's De Fabrica Corporis. (SS)
• Harvey's experiment showing circulation of the blood. (SI)

Universities and Courts

• The University of Padua. (SS)
• The Anatomy Theatre at Leiden.
• Emperor Rudolf II of Bohemia as allegorically depicted by Arcimboldo. (CAR)
• Lodestone presented by Galileo, symbolic of the Duke's power.
• The huge armillary sphere of Santucci dalle Pomarance. (AI)
• A New World beyond the Pillars of Hercules. (SS)
• The frontispiece to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society. (SS)

Scientific Instruments

• An all-purpose charting instrument, with attached manual. (AI)
• Antonio Bianchini's gilded compass and range finder. (AI)
• Tycho Brahe's Mural Quadrant. (SS)
• Tycho's scientific complex, Uraniborg. (SS)
• Tycho's observatory, Stellaborg. (SS)
• Room IV of the History of Science Museum in Florence, which contains many of Galileo's instruments

Galileo Galilei and the Structure of the Universe

• Tycho's cosmography. (SS)
• Kepler's cosmography of nested solids. (SI)
• Comparative cosmographies. (SI)
• A page from The Starry Messenger showing craters on the Moon. (SBB)
• Frontispiece of the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems. (SBB)
• Scheiner's experimental setup to investigate sunspots. (SI)
• Rice University's Galileo Project: a whole web site devoted to Galileo
• CUNY's Galileo and Perspective
• Room IV of the History of Science Museum in Florence: Galileo

Natural History and Virtuoso Knowledge

• A picture of the mandrake root in the medieval tradition, stressing its macro/microcosmic significance. (SBB)
• A more naturalistic picture of the same plant, from Fuchs. (SBB)
• The three illustrators who produced the second picture as part of Fuchs' Natural History of Plants. (SBB)
• The frontispiece to Olaus Wormius's catalogue of his museum
• A curiosity cabinet with art, antiquities, instruments, and natural wonders. (SS)
• A print from Frobisher's exploration of the Arctic Ocean. (SS)
• Meria Merian's New World butterflies. (SI)

Mechanical Philosophy and Scientific Societies

• Cartesian theory of vision. (SS)
• Cartesian theory of cosmic vortices. (SS)
• Borelli's drawings of man-as-machine. (SI)
• Torricelli's Barometer. (SS)
• The Magdeburg spheres experiment. (SI)
• Frontispiece to Sprat's History of the Royal Society. (SS)
• Louis XIV's (imaginary) visit to the Academie
• The French Academie Des Sciences. (SS)
• Boyle's air pump, at the heart of the Hobbes-Boyle debate
• The microscope used for Hooke's Micrographia
• Hooke's picture of a fly's head under a microscope

Women

• Naturalist Maria Merian's pictures of New World butterflies.

From Newton to Eighteenth-Century Science

• Newton's Experimentum Crucis, his description of which was the canonical exemplar of experiment in the Royal Society.
• A spectacular electrical experiment. (SI)
• Blake's portrait of Newton, concentrating on his geometry while unaware of the heavens above him or his missing pants

Bibliography

Bonelli, M. L. Righini and T. Settle. The Antique Instruments of the Museum of History of Science In Florence. Florence: Arnaud, no date given (1986?). Further references will be given as AI.

Karp, Diane R.. Ars Medica: Art, Medicine, and the Human Condition. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1985. Further references will be given as AM.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977 (1957). Further references will be given as CR.

Olmert, Michael. The Smithsonian Book Of Books. New York: Wings Books, 1992. Further references will be given as SBB.

Robin, Harry. The Scientific Image: From Cave to Computer. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1992. Further references will be given as SI.

Smith, Alan G. R. Science and Society in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York: Science History Publications, 1972. Further references will be given as SS.