Chemistry

On the Island of Hven, Tycho Brahe built a Renaissance research center called Uraniborg, “City of the Stars.” The first book printed on Tycho’s printing press at Uraniborg displays his motto, “looking up, I look down.” That motto symbolized his aim of coordinating the study of astronomy,...

When Galileo needed to purchase plates of brass to make his engineering compass or commissioned glass to make better lenses, metalsmith, assayers and craftsmen in Venice employed operations similar to those described in Birunguccio’s metallurgical manual.

For Robert Fludd, the universe is a monochord, its physical structure unintelligible without an understanding of music. In another section of the book, Fludd depicts the universe as a Temple of Music.

In this poster-sized work, the first publication of observations made with a microscope, Cesi and Stelluti studied the anatomy of the bee. The text includes classical references to bees as well as new knowledge, integrated in a tabular outline.

Della Porta explored various ideas for steam powered machines following the example of Hero of Alexandria. In antiquity, Hero fashioned marvelous automata using steam, air pressure, and hydraulics.

Some of Galileo’s most avid opponents were Aristotelian physicists who, lacking training in mathematics, were unable to refute Galileo’s arguments.

Nieremberg saw an unpublished manuscript of Hernandez. Many of his descriptions of plants and animals relied upon Hernandez and other sources from Mexico and Peru. In classification, Nieremberg retained Hernandez’ use of native Nahuatl names.

Galileo studied the “Stone of Bologna” or “solar sponge,” produced by alchemists from calcining spar (barium sulfide), which glows in the dark. Galileo inferred from its cool luminescence that light is not the same as heat, but a distinct entity, contra Aristotle.

The Academy of the Lynx (Accademia dei Lincei) dissolved after the death of its founder, Prince Federigo Cesi. In its place, Grand Duke Ferdinand II established the Academy of Experiment in Florence, which carried further the research program of Galileo.

Paracelsus in this book attacked Aristotelian philosophy, arguing that an experimental understanding of chemical processes would hold the key to advances in meteorology.

Although Galileo eloquently championed mathematical methods in science, the main target of his wit and sarcasm in The Assayer was Grassi, a fellow astronomer, whose mathematical methods proved that comets move above the Moon.

The Academy of the Lynx emblem appears prominently on this title page. Although Stelluti once believed that fossils resembling wood originated from buried tree trunks, Cesi persuaded him otherwise.

Galileo’s thermoscope, developed in the context of pneumatic engineering, was an ancestor to the thermometer. Galileo pioneered scientific investigations with the thermoscope along with his two Paduan friends, Giovanni Sagredo and Santorio Santorio.

In this work, von Guericke explained the design of his air pump and recounted additional experiments conducted with it. He employed the barometer to forecast the weather, and invented an electrostatic generator.

Newton’s contemporaries may have first heard of him through articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. There he reported his experiments with prisms on the nature of light and color in the atmosphere.