The Science of Naples
Making knowledge in Italy’s pre-eminent city, 1500-1800
Edited by Lorenza Gianfrancesco and Neil Tarrant
Long neglected in the history of Renaissance and early modern Europe, in recent years scholars have revised received understanding of the political and economic significance of the city of Naples and its rich artistic, musical and political culture. Its importance in the history of science, however, has remained relatively unknown.
The Science of Naples provides the first dedicated study of Neapolitan scientific culture in the English language. Drawing on contributions from leading experts in the field, this volume presents a series of studies that demonstrate Neapolitans’ manifold contributions to European scientific culture in the early modern period and considers the importance of the city, its institutions and surrounding territories for the production of new knowledge.
Individual chapters demonstrate the extent to which Neapolitan scholars and academies contributed to debates within the Republic of Letters that continued until deep into the nineteenth century. They also show how studies of Neapolitan natural disasters yielded unique insights that contributed to the development of fields such as medicine and volcanology. Taken together, these studies resituate the city of Naples as an integral part of an increasingly globalised scientific culture, and present a rich and engaging portrait of the individuals who lived, worked and made scientific knowledge there.
Lorenza Gianfrancesco is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of Chichester. Neil Tarrant is Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History, University of Leeds.
List of contributors
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Science of Early Modern Naples: A Missing City?
Part I: Neapolitan Science and its Institutions
1 ‘“Attenta cura a mille bei secreti di natura”: Ferrante Imperato’s Collection between Scientific Specimens and Natural Marvels’
Daniela Carraciolo
2 ‘Political Science in the Settecento University of Naples’
Felix Waldmann
Part II: Environment, Disaster and Disease in the Bay of Naples
3 ‘Giambattista Della Porta’s De aëris transmutationibus: Natural Philosophy and the Earth Sciences’
Alfonso Paollela
4 ‘“Miserable land, burnt by fire and submerged in water”’: The 1631 Eruption of Vesuvius’
Lorenza Gianfrancesco
5 ‘The effects of plague on medicine: the choices and dialogue among the novatores’
Silvana D’Alessio
Part III: Naples and the Early Modern World
6 ‘Kunst- und Naturalien-Kammern of Seventeenth-Century Naples: Johann Daniel Major’s View from Germany’
James Clifton
7 ‘Chinese Medicine as a Mirror of Neapolitan experimentalism: A case study of Parere (1681) by Leonardo di Capua (1617–1695)’
Daniel Canaris
8 ‘Courtly Exchange between Bourbon Naples and Hanoverian London after the French Revolution: Culture, Chemistry and the Herculaneum Papyri’
Frank A.J.L. James
IV: Neapolitan History in the Present Age
9 ‘“The Art of Healing, Healing through Art”: Art, Medicine and Science at the Hospital of the Incurables of Naples’
Format: Paperback
Size: 234 × 156 mm
294 Pages
27 colour photo/halftones
Copyright: © 2024
ISBN: 9781800086746
Publication: June 24, 2024
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