Pomata G., Siraisi N.G. (ed.) Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe

MIT Press, 2005. - 490 pp.
The early modern genre of historia connected the study of nature and the study of culture from the early Renaissance to the eighteenth century. The ubiquity of historia as a descriptive method across a variety of disciplines—including natural history, medicine, antiquarianism, and philology—indicates how closely intertwined these scholarly pursuits were in the early modern period. The essays collected in this volume demonstrate that historia can be considered a key epistemic tool of early modern intellectual practices.
Focusing on the actual use of historia across disciplines, the essays highlight a distinctive feature of early modern descriptive sciences: the coupling of observational skills with philological learning, empiricism with erudition. Thus the essays bring to light previously unexamined links between the culture of humanism and the scientific revolution.
The contributors, from a range of disciplines that echoes the broad scope of early modern historia, examine such topics as the development of a new interest in historical method from the Renaissance artes historicae to the eighteenth-century tension between "history" and "system"; shifts in Aristotelian thought paving the way for revaluation of historia as descriptive knowledge; the rise of the new discipline of natural history; the uses of historia in anatomical and medical investigation and the writing of history by physicians; parallels between the practices of collecting and presenting information in both natural history and antiquarianism; and significant examples of the ease with which early seventeenth-century antiquarian scholars moved from studies of nature to studies of culture.Introduction (by Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi).
The Identities of History in Early Modern Europe: Prelude to a Study of the Artes Historicae (by Anthony Grafton).
Natural History, Ethics, and Physico-Theology (by Brian W. Ogilvie).
Praxis Historialis: The Uses of Historia in Early Modern Medicine (by Gianna Pomata).
White Crows, Graying Hair, and Eyelashes: Problems for Natural Historians in the Reception of Aristotelian Logic and Biology from Pomponazzi to Bacon (by Ian Maclean).
Antiquarianism and Idolatry: The Historia of Religions in the Seventeenth Century (by Martin Mulsow).
Between History and System (by Donald R. Kelley).
Conrad Gessner and the Historical Depth of Renaissance Natural History (by Laurent Pinon).
Historia in Zwinger’s Theatrum humanae vitae (by Ann Blair).
Histories, Stories, Exempla, and Anecdotes: Michele Savonarola from Latin to Vernacular (by Chiara Crisciani).
Historiae, Natural History, Roman Antiquity, and Some Roman Physicians (by Nancy G. Siraisi).
Description Terminable and Interminable: Looking at the Past, Nature, and Peoples in Peiresc’s Archive (by Peter N. Miller).