Federico Cesi's Museum, whose inventory is transcribed here in its entirety for the first time, is in constant dialogue with the Library. Through the study of the Lincean sources, which attribute so much importance to the ars pingendi, the writing contextualizes the various inventory items, by analizying the events that influence the history of the Academia and by proposing some new documents on the legacy of the Cesi family.
This project examines the life and experimental/ domestic writing of Lady Venetia Digby (n & eacute;e Stanley; 1600-1633), including the context ofher marriage to Sir Kenelm Digby, an original member of the Royal Society. Lady Digby has largely been lost to history beyond her social and familial roles. She is remembered for her beauty and possible adultery, but rarely as a medical practitioner, or as a participant in the developing scientific world of seventeenth-century London. This article will seek to reattribute Wellcome MS. 7391 to Lady Digby, and use that manuscript (in the context of a larger primary archive and social network mapping) to reconstruct her role as an experimenter and medical practitioner. By undertaking this analysis, the study aims to demonstrate that women like Lady Digby were not only present but actively engaged in the scientific, cultural, and institutional networks of seventeenth-century England.
Galileo's interest in the nature and composition of wine, summarised in the saying "wine is a compound of humour and light" that is often ascribed to him, provided the basis for the research of the subsequent generation of scientists. These scientists had learned from their master how to approach the physics of wine in mechanistic and corpuscularian terms. Lorenzo Magalotti, Francesco Redi and Giuseppe Del Papa further developed this theme through a reflection and detailed analysis of the particulate structure of matter, the corporeal nature of light and the innumerable unsolved questions concerning the study of the apparati and organic functions ofbodies, as well as good dietetic and therapeutic practices.
InAstronomia Danica, Longomontanus provides a method for calculating the terrestrial longitude for a given location on Earth. To do so, he relies on precise calculations of the lunar position so that he can know when he is observing it without any parallax in longitude. As I will show, this method has a fatal flaw that renders it unusable. However, Longomontanus also provides a simple observational method that indicates, via the disposition of the lunar spot and/or horns, the time when the Moon shows no parallax in longitude. This last method, though it does not need any use of tables, also has some problems. In this paper Iwill explain in detail these methods provided by Longomontanus, together with the problems they carry.
Despite being the first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was denied membership. Her exclusion from these inner circles prevented her from participating in rigorous debates about her work and the work of her contemporaries. Although she was not invited into these conversations, she nevertheless entered them by imagining the kinds of objections her opponents would raise and publishing her responses in the form of an inner discourse. Inner discourse, here, describes a written dialogue where an author argues with themselves. This paper explores Cavendish’s use of inner discourse across three genres: philosophical prose, letter writing, and science-fiction. Ultimately, I argue that inner discourse as a literary device, for Cavendish, serves not only as a way to overcome social barriers, but also as an argument, by demonstration, against members of the Royal Society who believed that natural philosophy should be done primarily through experiments.
