"Nuncius" Annals of the History of Science

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L. ZUCCHI, Brunfels e Fuchs: l'illustrazione botanica quale ritratto della singola pianta o immagine della specie
This essay examines the two most important illustrated herbals of the 16^th century: the Herbarum vivae eicones (1530-32) by O. Brunfels and the De historia stirpium (1542) by L. Fuchs. Because a consistent and efficient method in taxonomy and nomenclature was not available at that time, the pictures of these volumes function as means for recognizing and identifying plants, rather than classifyng them. The two works, therefore try to solve problems similar to those addressed by today's field guides, and they do so with analogous visual strategies. Their pictures exemplify two distinct options available to naturalistic illustration: portraying an individual subject with its accidental characteristics and representing ?synthetically' an ideal type, the latter being dominant in the subsequent history of biological knowledge. This essay analizes the theoretical implications of both choices, and the relationship between the formal and stylistic features of images and the information conveyed by them. Furthermore, it also studies the interaction between text and figures of the two herbals and the reasons put forward in the Renaissance to defend or censure botanical illustration.

G.R. Levi-Donati, Four Hundred and Twenty-Five Years Later: Egnazio Danti's Anemoscope
In 1577 the Dominican priest Egnazio Danti (1536-1586), at the time Magister at the University of Bologna, made a brief visit to his home town of Perugia, where he designed and installed for the Governor's Palace an anemoscope of his own invention. Some four hundred and twenty-five year later, precious pieces of this antique instrument have been rediscovered among the parts of antiques instruments of the Civic Museum of the City of Perugia, conserved in the National Museum of Archaeology, Archaeological Superintendence of Umbria. On the basis of a careful historical and iconographical analysis, this Renaissance era instrument is described in its entirety.

Y. Zik, Kepler and the telescope
In the Watershed: a Biography of Johannes Kepler (New York, Anchor Books Doubleday & Company Inc., 1960) Arthur Koestler wrote, «Apart from its strategical importance in the cosmological battle, the Conversation with the Star Messenger is without much scientific value...» (p. 193). He continued, «Kepler had instinctively felt the ring of truth in the Star Messenger , and that had settled the question for him» (194). Unfortunately, Kepler's Conversation has been largely neglected in current historical and philosophical scolarship as a source for Kepler's and Galileo's methodological and epistemological studies related to the telescope.
Clearly, although Kepler's account was not quantitative and definitive in the absence of the sine law of refraction, it did lead him to the conclusion that one could construct a telescope by combining two convex lenses. On the other hand, the optical layout that Kepler suggested did not came into widespread use until the 1640s. Moreover, even after completing his Dioptrice Kepler was never able to construct either a Galilean or a Keplerian workable telescope.
Kepler's optical thoughts, however, suggest some new aspects to be considered. In this respect, two periods of time are important: the time before Kepler had a Galilean telescope and the time after. Within this time frame, it may be instructive to follow Kepler's discussion and learn what he thought about the gadget of which many exemplars were manufactured as commodities for sale, and why, even after the completion of his Dioptrice, he failed to construct a workable telescope.

E. SERGIO, Bacon, Hobbes e l'idea di «Philosophia naturalis»: due modelli di riforma della scienza
In seventeenth-century English thought, Bacon and Hobbes offer two different ways of thinking about the architecture of sciences and the methods of acquisition of knowledge. Between these two thinkers is a different conception of the philosophia naturalis. This category involves logical and metaphysical matters: the definition of the demonstrative status of science; the function of «pure» mathematics in natural philosophy; the goals of the philosophia prima in the encyclopedia of sciences; the relation between facts and theories; the practical ends of science.
In the recognition of possible Baconian influences, a difference is raised about the role of the ratio mathematicarum. According to Hobbes, mathematical reasoning is the fulcrum of the philosophy of knowledge and of nature, while for Bacon it has an ‘ancillary' function with regard to the ars indicii as a method for the discovery of causes and forms of reality.
Nevertheless, the Baconian bestowal of an «auxiliary» role to mathematics does not render quantitative reasoning less operative in experimental procedures of natural philosophy; Bacon takes the quantitative as a necessary condition for the control and the operative extension of experiment.

F. GIUDICE, G. BONERA, Lorenzo Mascheroni e Alessandro Volta: un dialogo tra scienza e poesia
This essay analyses the scientific relationship between two of the most significant figures of the scientific enlightenment in Lombardy : the Abbot Lorenzo Mascheroni, noted mathematician and exceptional poet, and Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the electric battery. Special attention is paid to the debate and subsequent controversy on the thesis, put forward by Luigi Galvani in the De viribus electricitatis in motu muscolari (1792), on the existence of a type of electricity peculiar to living beings. The subject of the present study, however, is not so much the controversy between Galvani and Volta, as the way in which it was perceived and represented by Mascheroni in the famous poem in blank verse, the Invito a Lesbia Cidonia of 1793. Through a careful reconstruction of the debate carried out before the publication of the Invito, whose significant editorial phases are examined, we show how Mascheroni transforms the terms of the controversy into powerful and allusive poetic verse, without however hiding his own attraction for the way in which Volta calls into doubt Galvani's interpretation of the experiments on frogs.

L. MAISON, Les observatoires italiens en 1875 un exemple pour le renouveau de l'astronomie française?
This paper deals with a scientific tour of the Italian observatories made in 1875 by the French astronomer Georges Rayet (1839-1906) who was mandated by the French Government involved in the reorganization of astronomical research in the 1870s. His notes and publications relating his investigations permit us to draft a listing of the astronomical instruments used in Italy at that time. We attempt to show that the Italian model praised by G. Rayet and based on a decentralized system and on the coordination of the spectroscopic studies could not be applied in France. The persistence of the centralization and the monopoly of the Meudon Observatory in the astrophysical field could explain such an impossibility.
However, the reasons of these French features remain to be specified.

Per un archivio della corrispondenza degli scienziati italiani

M.C. MILIGHETTI, Giovan Francesco Salvemini detto Castiglione: esilio ed ascesa di un matematico
This essay is concerned with some scientific and informal letters by the Italian mathematician Giovan Francesco Salvemini (1708-1791) known as Castiglione. Salvemini was the author of a translation and edition of the Opuscula Mathematica Philosophica et Philologica and a commentary on the Arithmetica universalis by Sir Isaac Newton. He also wrote several essays in the «Memoirs» of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin.
After escaping from Italy in 1736, he lived for some time in Switzerland, Holland and Germany, meeting mathematicians like Niklaus Bernoulli, Willem Jacob's Gravesande, Jean Baptiste D'Alembert, Leonhard Euler and other scientists linked to the English Newtonian Societies of the Continent.

S. DE CAROLIS, A.A. CONTI, D. LIPPI, Un carteggio inedito tra Antonio Cocchi e Giovanni Bianchi
Giovanni Bianchi ( alias Iano Planco, 1693-1775), physician, scientist, scholar and versatile writer, represents the most relevant personality of the cultural milieu of Rimini (Emilia Romagna, Italy) during the XVIII century.
In his palace, furnished with a rich library and a varied collection, he created a private school, in which dozens of pupils were educated.
The correspondence examined in the present paper provides evidence of one of Bianchi's many exchanges of letters: in this case, with the famous physician and naturalist Antonio Cocchi, called “Mugellano” (1695-1758).
This important collection of letters spans a well defined period; however, it is well known that autograph papers of Bianchi are full of reminiscences and references regarding Cocchi.

G. SCALVA, Un viaggio scientifico alla metà del secolo XVIII. Inventario del carteggio intorno al Viaggio in Levante di Vitalia no Donati
The voyage to the Near and Far East that king Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy entrusted professor Vitaliano Donati in 1759, represents one of the first and most important scientific and economic missions conducted during the Enlightenment in Italy. The Memoria Istruttiva, containing a description of the tasks to be performed in the countries visited, already published in a previous issue of this Journal, is a document of prime importance, as is also the Giornale di viaggio (travel journal). Long investigations in the Court Archives of the Kingdom of Sardinia, however, have uncovered over 450 letters written by expedition members, their local correspondents, foreign legacies, involved ministries, and a host of minor actors, which have been now critically reordered and inventoried. This corpus, now practically completed, gives an unexpected perspective to this scientific expedition, revealing the complex scenarios involved. Though the mission terminated abruptly with the death of professor Donati in 1762 in the Indian Ocean, the analysis of these written documents, never reorganised before, shows important aspects that often, and erroneously, appear secondary in a scientific enterprise. The role of diplomatic relations, personal affairs and intrigues involving the participants, the search for financial support, and difficulties deriving from the different mentalities and cultures, reveal a “dark side” that usually never appears in the official reports. The political and diplomatic world centred around the Mediterranean Sea in those years appears in its involvement; the epistolary exchange around the return home of Donati's personal goods collected by priests of the Vatican legacy in Goa, shows the structure of the diplomatic and economic network ranging from Levant to the Mediterranean.

L. CIANCIO, Secondo contributo all'inventario del carteggio di Alberto Fortis
What is presented here is a list of previously unknown letters by Alberto Fortis (1741-1803) recently discovered in various archives and libraries. It includes 42 new items who are to be added to the 1338 items listed in Žarko Muljacic's Inventario («Nuncius», V, 1990, 1, pp. 127-203) and the 307 items listed in Luca Ciancio's Contributo («Nuncius», VII, 1992, 2, pp. 141-159). These letters provide further information about Forti's scientific activities and cosmopolitan relations.

Istituzioni e fonti

S. PELUCCHI, Histoires parallèles. Histoire de la collection de minéralogie d'Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
The essay surveys Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's collection of minerals preserved at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle Henry-Lecoq of Clermont-Ferrrand. The collection was donated to the city in 1837 by Léon de Chazelles and his wife Jean de Sugny, niece and heir of Madame Lavoisier.
It consists of more of 3000 items.
In addition to a general description of the collection the article provides a transcription of the index of Lavoisier's own catalogue.

Scientific Instrument Commission

Spectroscope Histories. Part II. Papers based on a workshop organised in collaboration with the IUHPS Scientific Instrument Commission with the support of the Hans-Jenemann Foundation, and hosted by the Deutsches Museum. Munich, 2001. Edited with an Introduction by C. BIGG and K. STAUBERMANN.

Ricordo

P. GALLUZZI, Bernard Cohen and Italy

Discussioni critiche

A. BALLERINI, Storia e follia

Recensioni

The IMSS Bookshelf

Indici (Anno XVIII, 2003)

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M. ROSEN, Don Miniato Pitti and the Second Life of a Scientist's Tools in Cinquecento Florence
Greatly esteemed in the late sixteenth century, the Florentine scientist and cosmographer Don Miniato Pitti left behind only a single securely attributed instrument. However, a newly discovered document indicates that immediately after Pitti's death in 1566 the young ducal cosmographer Egnazio Danti bought a number of Pitti's scientific tools and instruments, as well as several artistic objects. Danti's purchases shed new light on how tools circulated within the scientific community and also illustrate the high regard that the young Danti had for his predecessor.

F. CAMEROTA, Two new attributions: a refractive dial of Guidobaldo del Monte and the «Roverino compass» of Fabrizio Mordente
In this article two new attributions are proposed, concerning two instruments linked by their common provenance from Urbino, and more precisely from the shop of the renowned constructor of scientific instruments Simone Barocci. Both are described by Muzio Oddi, who provides testimony that is decisive for their attribution. The first is a rare refractive dial now in the Museum of the History of Science at Florence, documented in the Medicean collection since 1574, which can be identified with the one Oddi says that Guidobaldo del Monte ordered built at Urbino in 1572. The second is a proportional compass now at the Correr Museum in Venice, which perfectly matches Oddi's description of a compass constructed by Simone Barocci as ordered by Fabrizio Mordente around 1570. This is the first version of the famous compass that Mordente was to make known in later years through his treatises .

S. DUPRÉ, The Dioptrics of Refractive Dials in the Sixteenth Century
This article discusses a particular type of optical instruments, refractive dials, made in the sixteenth century, by placing them in the context of contemporary optical knowledge. First, the properties of refractive sundials and their introduction in the sixteenth century by the German instrument-maker George Hartmann will be discussed. Second, it will be shown how these refractive dials were constructed in the sixteenth century. From an analysis of the notes of Ettore Ausonio, this article argues that the procedure to make refractive dials used by instrument-designers in the sixteenth century was based on contemporary knowledge of refraction.

M.P. DONATO, L'onere della prova. Il Sant'Uffizio, l'atomismo e i medici romani
The essay aims at addressing the debates on corpuscular theories in Rome within the context of the political and religious tensions of the late 17^th century.
Documents in the archives of the «Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede» allow us to outline the changing attitudes of the Church of Rome towards atomistic philosophy and to highlight the factional clashes within Roman institutions on the issue. These dynamics gave way to the Congresso Medico Romano of G. Bresavola and G.M. Lancisi, an academy which soon became the promoting agent of an electric corpuscular medicine.
The Holy Office put the success of the «moderns» into question in 1690, after Alexander VIII had come to the throne. The attack was part of a general repression of atomism (also in Naples and Florence) but also of quietism and freethinking.
Despite the crisis, the «moderns» were able to bind their corpuscularism to a strictly defined epistemological model. In the frame of the contemporary biomedical sciences, questions on the ultimate nature of atoms could be abandoned without dismissing the corpuscular theory and practice of medicine.

M.T. MONTI, I lombrichi di Spallanzani. «Notomie» inedite contro i «garbugli e pasticci» dell'«argomento di analogia»
As though embarrassed by the huge amount of material he stored up, Spallanzani hid entire parts of his biological project. A good example is given by 25 laboratory notebooks which were to constitute the basis of a major work on regeneration he announced in the year 1768 and never published. There Spallanzani recorded anatomical observations he carried out on some annelids with a refinement of method and critical understanding only equalled by Malpighi and Lyonnet when observing caterpillars. His research on these organisms highlights how critically Spallanzani referred to the various versions of the generally accepted principle of the uniformity of composition of animal structure.

A. BANDINELLI, 1783 - Lavoisier and Laplace: Another Crucial Year. Antiphlogistic Chemistry and the Investigation on Living Beings between the Eighteenth and the Ninenteenth Centuries
The present paper suggests a new interpretation of Lamarckian biology based on the analysis of the different theories concerning living beings between the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The nouvelle chimie introduced a new concept of combustion that overturned the way of thinking about the heat of bodies. Moreover it is possible to show that the nouvelle chimie opened a new era by also changing the organisation of the so called "animate machine". The living body turned into a «natural compound» constantly exposed to material transformation. Thanks to the nouvelle chimie the living body became a natural system, i.e. a unit governed by two physico-chemical laws: the principle of the conservation of heat (1783) and the principle of the conservation of mass (1789). The belief in a living machine subject to Newtonian dynamics started to crumble: the image of a complicated machine died to give birth to the new concept of system. The living body was no longer a concern of mechanics but of physical-chemical discourse.

V.P. BABINI, Paola Lombroso, una donna nelle scienze dell'uomo
The article reconstructs the intellectual development of Paola Lombroso and the role she played in the diffusion of the field of child psychology in Italy. At a time when scientific psychology was in its early phases and studies on childhood were concentrated on its pathological aspects, Paola represents a unique voice in her field, and one well-respected by the Italian publishing scene. Introduced to these sciences by her father, Cesare, who himself recognized the legitimacy of the descriptive psychological approach, Paola developed in her writings a progressive distance from Lombrosian Anthropology. A self-taught and prolific author, well-known and well-respected by her peers, and translated abroad, Paola Lombroso, while never attaining primary status in scientific research or institutionally, nonetheless presented considerable contributions to the spread of this psychology. The reconstruction of Paola's development contributes to an overall explanation of the Italian context in the arena of psychological sciences at the time. In this period several women obtained considerable fame and visibility, thanks in part to the importance they attached to scientific popularisation both in the promotion of knowledge and in population's education.

A. MINELLI, L'omologia rivisitata
Many different and even contrasting notions of homology have been proposed over two centuries of comparative biology, beginning with the initial reference to idealised archetypes, down to the current concepts based on derivation from a common ancestor, or on shared developmental pathways or genetic (more extensively, informational) background. Select anatomical features such as the patterns of innervation, or the expression patterns of genes putatively involved in key developmental events, e.g. the Hox genes, have been repeatedly suggested as the most reliable cues to homology. This confidence, however, rests on shaky ground and results are never certain. Recent work in comparative morphology and evolutionary developmental biology increasingly suggests the need to abandon the traditional all-or- nothing notion of homology, in favour of a more flexible, factorial or combinatorial approach. In this way it will be possible to accommodate within one broad comparative view, respectful of phylogeny and developmental biology alike, many disparate notions such as positional and special homology, serial homology and temporal serial homology. All statements of homology, however, will thus require adequate qualification of the context specifically taken in consideration and the criteria used to address the comparison. It remains to be seen, in the near future, how far the old concept of homology, now under the burden of so many and so different notions, will still be of use to comparative biology.

Per un Archivio della corrispondenza degli scienziati italiani

A. MESCHIARI, Corrispondenza di Giovanni Battista Amici con William Henry Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Talbot, pioneer of photography and discoverer of the negative-positive method, was in intermittent correspondence with Giovanni Battista Amici from 1822 to 1844. His original letters, kept by the Biblioteca Estense in Modena together with Amici's copies, are published here completely for the first time.

Istituzioni e fonti

C. BINO, Macchine e teatro. Il cantiere di Bernardo Buontalenti agli Uffizi
The article discusses the working method of Bernardo Buontalenti, the court engineer of the Medici family under Cosimo I and his son Francesco I.
Buotalenti is a crucial figure for the history of theatre, because he was able to consolidate and rivitalise a tradition, in so far as he used the pre-existing technical knowledge and, at the same time, reinterpreted it in an original way; moreover he "invented" a new profession. By analysing the Memoriale of Girolamo Seriacopi, Provveditore di Castello, which records the works made in Uffizi theatre for the wedding of Ferdinando I de' Medici and Cristina di Lorena (1589), I trace the dynamics of Buontalenti's building site in order to infer some knowledge about the stage machines from the work practice. This method of analysis enables me to make two hypotheses: on the one hand, Buontalenti's machinery was built according to the rules of Florentine tradition (which was in part different from the one from Pesaro which is the basis of Sabbatini's treaty and is usually considered the primary tool for understanding Buontalenti); on the other hand, the use of craft knowledge begins a specialization process that will develop along the seventeenth century.

Ricordo

D. BERTOLONI MELI, Maurizio Mamiani as Newton Scholar

S. CAROTI, Pierre Souffrin

Discussioni critiche

D. RAYNAUD, Linear perspective in Masaccio's Trinity fresco: demonstration or self-persuasion?

G. FERRARI, Letters in the Earth Sciences: their historic value and present-day scientific relevance

Recensioni

The IMSS bookshelf

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