Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750

Front Cover
Zone Books, Oct 10, 2001 - Science - 512 pages

Wonders and the Order of Nature is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, petrifying springs, celestial apparitions — these were the marvels that adorned romances, puzzled philosophers, lured collectors, and frightened the devout.

Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explore and explain how wonder and wonders fortified princely power, rewove the texture of scientific experience, and shaped the sensibility of intellectuals. This is a history of the passions of inquiry, of how wonder sometimes inflamed, sometimes dampened curiosity about nature’s best-kept secrets. Refracted through the prism of wonders, the order of nature splinters into a spectrum of orders, a tour of possible worlds.

From inside the book

 

Contents

Preface
9
THE TOPOGRAPHY OF WONDER
21
THE PROPERTIES OF THINGS
67
Copyright

11 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

Abbot Suger Académie Royale Albertus Magnus animals Année Aristotelian Aristotle art and nature Augustine automata Bacon Bernard de Fontenelle Bibliothèque Boyle broadsides Cambridge Cardano causes Céard Chapter collections contemporary culture curiosity Cynocephali demons Descartes described divine early modern Encyclopédie European example exotic explanation Ficino figured stones Fontenelle French Gerald of Wales Gervase of Tilbury Girolamo Cardano Histoire human Ibid Idem imagination inquiry intellectual Jean John Journal des Sçavans late Latin London magical marvels mechanical philosophy medieval miracles monsters monstrous births Museum natural history natural philosophy natural wonders naturalia naturalists nature's Nicole Oresme objects observations Oresme Paris Académie particular passion phenomena physicians pleasure portents preternatural philosophy princes prodigies rare rarity Renaissance rerum romance Royal Society Royale des Sciences scientific seventeenth century sixteenth century stones strange facts Suger things tion Topography tradition trans treatise University Press vulgar wonder and wonders writers Wunderkammern

About the author (2001)

Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and the editor of Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (both Zone Books).

Bibliographic information

TitleWonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750
AuthorsLorraine Daston, Katharine Park
Editionillustrated, revised
PublisherZone Books, 2001
Original fromthe University of California
DigitizedOct 7, 2009
ISBN0942299914, 9780942299915
Length512 pages
Subjects › 

Science / History
  
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