The power of images in early modern science

Abstract

The book is dedicated to the role of visual representations in the early modern period. It brings together historical case studies from various fields and discusses epistemological questions such as the role of images as mediatory instances between practical and theoretical knowledge, the interaction between images and texts, and the potential of images to synthesize fragments of knowledge to a global picture.

Contents

Introduction / Wolfgang Lefevre, Jurgen Renn and Urs Schoepflin -- The challenging images of artillery : practical knowledge at the roots of the scientific revolution / Jochen Buttner, Peter Damerow, Jurgen Renn and Matthias Schemmel -- Ships, science and the three traditions of early modern design / David McGee -- Art and artifice in the depiction of Renaissance machines / Paolo Galluzzi -- The limits of pictures : cognitive functions of images in practical mechanics -- 1400 to 1600 / Wolfgang Lefevre -- Reframing the language of inventions : the first theatre of machines / Luisa M. Dolza -- Alchemical iconography at the dawn of the modern age : the splendor solis of Salomon Trismosin / Anne-Francoise Cannella -- The invention of atomist iconography / Christoph Luthy -- Image and text in natural history, 1500-1700 / Brian W. Ogilvie -- Notes on the function of early zoological imagery / Allan Ellenius -- Elephant, mammoth, unicorn, or what? : notes on the interrelations of pictures and texts in Leibniz / Alexandre Metraux -- Planetary diagrams -- descriptions, models, theories : from carolingian deployments to Copernican debates / Bruce Eastwood and Gerd Grasshoff -- Images, models and symbols in Copernican propaganda / Giancarlo Nonnoi -- Edmond Halley and visual representation in natural philosophy / Alan Cook -- Encyclopaedias and architecture in the sixteenth century / Annarita Angelini -- The mathematical sciences in Raphael's school of Athens / Matthias Winner.