Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Observation in Renaissance Science

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

  • 145 Accesses

Abstract

Following the Greek reflection, Renaissance authors subsumed the notion of observation under that of experience. Nonetheless, observation in Renaissance played a crucial role in the making of the modern science, when astronomers and physicians began observing the world systematically. The invention of the printing press, the discovery of the Americas, the introduction of the perspective shaped the way Renaissance actors observed the world.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

Primary Literature

  • Alberti, L.B. 1991. On painting. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aristotle. 1995. In The complete works of Aristotle, ed. D. Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacon, F. 1962–1989. Novum Organum. In The works of Francis Bacon. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackwell, R. 1991. Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borelli, G.A. 1666. Theoricae Mediceorum planetarum ex causis physicis deductae. Florence: Ex Typographia S.M.D.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brahe, T. 1913–1929 In Tychonis Brahe Opera Omnia, ed. J.L.E. Dreyer, 15 vols. Copenhagen: Hauniae In Libraria Gyldendaliana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campanella, T. 2001. Apologia pro Galileo. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, G. 1959. Historia general y natural de las Indias (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gockel, R. (Goclenius). 1980/1613. Lexicon philosophicum. Hildesheim/New York: Georg Olms Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herodotus. 2003. The histories. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kepler, J. 1981 Mysterium Cosmographicum. The secret of the universe. Trans. A.M. Duncan. Introduction and commentary by E. J. Aiton, with a preface by I. Bernard Cohen. New York: Abaris Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nutton, V. 2004. Ancient Medicine (London: Routledge)

    Google Scholar 

  • Plato. 1997. In Theetetus in complete works, ed. John M. Cooper. Cambridge/Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramusio, G. 1550–1606. Navigationi et Viaggi, 3 vols. Venice: Eredi Lucantonio Giunti.

    Google Scholar 

  • Regiomontanus. 1544. Scripta clarissimi mathematici M. Johannis Regiomontani. Nuremberg: Ioannem Montanum et Ulricum Neuber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schöner, J. 1544. Observationes XXX annorum a I. Regiomontano et B. Walthero Norimbergae habitae. Nuremberg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thucydides 1972 History of the Peloponnesian war. Trans. Rex Warner; with an introduction and notes by M.I. Finley. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vesalius 1543. De humanis corporis fabrica (Basel: ex oficina Ioannis Oporini)

    Google Scholar 

Secondary Literature

  • Arnheim, R. 1974. Art and visual perception. In A psychology of the creative eye. Berkeley: The University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrera-Osorio, A. 2006. Experiencing nature. The Spanish American empire and the early scientific revolution. Austin: Texas University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baxandall, M. 1977. Giotto and the orators. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belting, H. 2010. Spiegel der Welt. Die Erfindung des Gemäldes in der Niederlandern. Münich: Hirmer Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Canfora, L. 2014. La crisi dell’utopia. Aristofane contro Platone. Rome-Bari: Laterza.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Martino, E. 2013. Sud e Magia. Feltrinelli: Milan.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Vries, J. 2008. The industrious revolution. Consumer behavior and the household economy, 1650 to the present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dear, P. 1995. Discipline and experience. The mathematical way in the scientific revolution. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dupré, S. 2005. Introduction. The Hockney–Falco thesis: Constraints and opportunities. Early Science and Medicine 10 (2): 125–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elliott, J. 2006. Empires of the Atlantic world: Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Febre, L., and H.J. Martin. 1958. L’aparition du livre. Paris: Albin Michel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. 1966. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ginzburg, C. 1976. The cheese and the worms. The cosmos of a sixteenth-century miller. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ginzburg, C. 1983. The night battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian cults in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gombrich, E. 1960. Art and illusion. A study in the psychology of pictorial representation. New York: Phaidon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grafton, A. 1995. New worlds, ancient texts : The power of tradition and the shock of discovery. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grafton, A. 2000. Leon Battista Alberti: Master builder of the Italian renaissance. New York: Hill & Wang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gramsci, A. 1991. Prison notebooks. 3 vols. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanson, N.R. 1958. Patterns of discovery. Cambrdige: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hartog, F. 1988. The mirror of Herodotus: The representation of the other in the writing of history. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hockney, D. 2006. Secret knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters. London: Thames & Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koyré, A. 1973. The astronomical revolution: Copernicus, Kepler, Borelli. New York: Dover.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Th.S. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Th.S. 1977. The essential tension. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. 1987. Race et histoire. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nenci, G. 1953. Il motivo dell’autopsia nella storiografia greca. Studi Classici e Orientali 3: 14–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Panofsky, E. 1991. Perspective as symbolic form. New York: Zone Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Park, C. 2011. Observation in the margins 500 – 1500. In Histories of scientific observation, ed. Lorraine Daston and Elisabeth Lunbeck, 15–44. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pomata, G. 2011. Observation rising: Birth of an Epystemic genre 1500–1650. In Histories of scientific observation, ed. Lorraine Daston and Elisabeth Lunbeck, 45–80. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rossi, P. 2007. Il tempo dei maghi. Rinascimento e modernità. Milan: Raffaello Cortina.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rubiès, J.-P. 2007. Travellers and cosmographers. Studies in the history of early modern travel and ethnology. London: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schechner, S.J. 2005. Between knowing and doing: Mirrors and their imperfections in the renaissance. Early Science and Medicine 10 (2): 137–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Siraisi, N. 2007. History, medicine and the tradition of renaissance learning. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Viveiros de Castro, E. 2014. Cannibal Metaphysics. Univocal Publications. Minneapolis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, L. 1991. Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

    Daniele Cozzoli

Authors
  1. Daniele Cozzoli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniele Cozzoli .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Philosophy a. Cultural Heritage, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Dept. of Philosophy a. Cultural Heritage, Venezia, Italy

    Marco Sgarbi

Section Editor information

  1. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Matteo Valleriani

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this entry

Cite this entry

Cozzoli, D. (2017). Observation in Renaissance Science. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_958-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_958-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation