Galilæana. Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Science

Remembering Enrico Giusti

2024-09-19T15:03:43+00:00

Enrico Giusti died on March 26th, 2024, at nearly 84 years of age. I met him in November 1978 – a lifetime ago. And with him, a large part of my life is gone. There will undoubtedly be other occasions to remember him as a mathematician and a historian of science, fields in which Enrico left his own mark, a very important one. What I hope to do here is to weave together the threads of memory from more than forty years of exchanges and friendship.

Jim Bennett (1947-2023)

2024-09-13T12:07:40+00:00

The Olympic Competition of Thomas Digges: The measurement of parallax and the development of observational methods in astronomy

2024-05-07T09:26:09+00:00

A few months after the appearance of the supernova SN1572, Thomas Digges wrote a Latin book entitled Alae seu Scalae Mathematicae… in which he presented new methods for measuring small parallax angles like those expected for planets and other objects at similar distances. On the basis of our new translation into English of some sections of this book, we point out several relevant innovations developed by Digges. These concern the accuracy of astronomical measurements and a discussion on the origin of observational and computational errors. Furthermore, Digges introduced a simple but effective method for the falsification of observational results, which was useful for disproving some incorrect claims reported by other observers. It is also clear that Digges is completely disinterested in the astrological implications of this unexpected celestial phenomenon.

Introduction. The art of memory and the sciences in the Early Modern Age

2024-08-12T14:22:28+00:00

This focus concerns the relation between the tradition of the art of memory and the sciences during the Early Modern Age in Europe. Seven essays: from anatomy to mathematics.

Theatres of memory and anatomical theatres: Notes on Giulio Camillo, rhetoric, magic and anatomy between 16th and 17th century

2024-04-10T08:14:55+00:00

The aim of this study is to highlight the links between rhetorical-mnemotechnical, magical-alchemical and anatomical investigation, starting with the works of Giulio Camillo Delminio (c. 1480-1544). Through this reconstruction it is possible to observe how for Camillo and for others in his milieux, especially the Venetian academies of the 16^th century, these arts were conceived in terms of profound interdisciplinarity, moving towards a new encyclopedia of knowledge. The key to this knowledge was memory and its ars, through which homo loquens was able to dominate both the natural and transcendent worlds by rediscovering the innate traces of knowledge dormant in their soul. We will also observe the profound links between this cultural paradigm and the parallel birth of new tools used in anatomical investigation, anatomical tables and, above all, anatomical theatres, paying particular attention to the case of the Anatomical Theatre of Bologna.

Memory as shadow of the method in Peter Ramus and French Ramism

2024-04-17T07:43:52+00:00

The article examines the ambiguous role of memory in Peter Ramus' reform of logic and in sixteenth-century French encyclopedic Ramism. In particular, it shows how, in Ramus' writings on dialectics, the art of memory loses its identity as an autonomous discipline and is entirely absorbed by the doctrine of method. Such an identification of memory and method presupposes a conception of knowledge as an objectification of structures and mental operations that is inadequate to the setup of an encyclopedic project aimed at guaranteeing the objective and extra-mental contents of the disciplines, as the one that asserted itself among the first generation of the regius professor's scholars. It is precisely in this context that, also thanks to the revival of Lullist instances, memory is charged with classificatory and unifying functions regarded as necessary and preliminary to the application to all arts and sciences of Ramus' unique method.

Between geometric schemes and mnemonic images: The three paradigmatic figures of Giordano Bruno’s Articuli adversus mathematicos

2024-03-01T08:52:33+00:00

Giordano Bruno’s Articuli adversus mathematicos (Prague 1588) is an emblematic text for more than one reason: it contains a harsh critique of the astronomical measurement techniques in use at the time, but also a radical attack on the theoretical foundations of geometry itself, proposing a discrete notion of basic geometric objects such as the point, the line, the plane, and solid figures. Moreover, Bruno enriches the text with some important references to the art of memory, not only to make his argument easier to understand, but also to offer concrete mnemotechnical tools to help the reader perceive and remember the geometric constructions he proposes. In this sense, the three archetypal images are a unique attempt to construct graphic schematisations to illustrate and memorise (by means of a technical tool called sigillus) the main propositions of Euclidis Elements, as well as the particular theoretical approach that Bruno gives to his geometry.

Walking through ideas: Memory and the body in the premodern memory palace

2024-03-23T10:14:59+00:00

Early Modern Italian manuals for memorization present memory as deeply embodied, especially through the memory palace technique. Here, physical sensation, emotion, navigational skills, and personal experience, are all functional to intellectual learning. This article individuates these embodied tools through the analysis of three memorization manuals from 16th century Italy – a time, place, and religious context, in which the body could still be involved in mnemnonics: Dolce’s Dialogo del modo di accrescere e conservar la memoria (1562), Della Porta’s L’Arte del Ricordare (1566), and Gesualdo’s Plutosofia (1592).
In these manuals, it is especially the loci, the architectures of the memory palace, which show sensory participation. Fundamental for place-navigation skills, these embodied techniques are a theoretical challenge for the manuals’ authors, tied to the period’s view of memory as a fundamentally abstract process. Their various approaches are reviewed, and organized along a spectrum, from claiming to denying the contribution of the described practices to a theory of memory and knowledge.

The epistemological and artistic relevance of Robert Fludd’s memory theatres

2024-03-23T10:21:02+00:00

This article explores the memory theatres in Robert Fludd’s major work Utriusque cosmi historia (History of both worlds), focusing in particular on their epistemological and artistic relevance. My recent research into Fludd’s manuscripts has revealed that the British philosopher invested his personal skills in the art of drawing, in order to materialise his ideas for images. He created appealing designs for his books, which worked as visualisations of his philosophical texts, both allusively and didactically. In this article, I develop my earlier findings by arriving at the conclusion that Fludd also used skills in the art of memory to create and organise his ideas for images. Most notably, Fludd preferred round and square shapes, corresponding to the shapes that he applied in his “Ars memoriae”. I conclude the article by exploring the further historical reception and development of Fludd’s hermetic art of memory, showing the shift from mnemonics as a competency in Renaissance arts and sciences to mnemonics as an artistic subject and method in modern and contemporary fine arts.

The ars memorativa and ecfrasis: Technical and exhortative descriptions to construct the great theatre of memory

2024-05-07T10:06:07+00:00

The highly suggestive but also emblematic relationship between the art of memory and rhetorical ecphrasis has often been noted and investigated since the earliest studies devoted to ars memorativa. Indeed, the so-called imagines agentes require strong psychic representations capable of strongly mobilizing the passions of the memory artist, effects comparable to those that are provoked by ecphrastic descriptions (enargeia). However, there are few studies that deal in depth with loci memoriae from the perspective of ecphrasis. So this contribution aims to reconsider the relationship between the art of memory and ekphrasis through the rereading of a series of early modern mnemonic treatises focusing especially on their peculiar ways of illustrating the composition of architectural mental places, described in a clear, detailed and effective way so that readers can compose them by oneself. From such an approach I believe it is possible to thoroughly highlight the synergy of words, images and spaces. Main texts to be analyzed are chosen from mnemonic treatises that present compressed architectural mental places such as theaters, palaces, cities, gardens, including Utriusque Cosmi, Maioris scilicet et Minoris (…) by Robert Fludd, Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae by Cosma Rosselli, etc.

Memorizing numerical data in the 17th and 18th centuries. Technical innovations and new practices

2024-05-17T09:31:29+00:00

Because the classical art of memory was part of rhetoric, Latin authors did not develop detailed techniques for memorizing numbers. During the Renaissance, some methods for memorizing numerical data were added to the ars memoriae, partly due to the growing readership of memory treatises among merchants. However, the memorization of numerical data remained a marginal topic in memory manuals, and the available techniques were cumbersome when dealing with multiple long numbers. As numerical thinking became prevalent in the “outillage mental” of the time, a specific mnemonic technique was devised in the 17th century. By converting numbers into consonants and then forming words by adding vowels, mnemonists could employ mental images to represent these words and effectively memorize the corresponding numbers. This paper aims to trace the spread of this new technique from France to the Holy Roman Empire and, in the 18th century, to England. Additionally, it will show how new fields of knowledge were incorporated into treatises of the 17th and 18th centuries. Thus, this paper will shed light on how the Scientific Revolution led to the development of new mnemonics by practitioners with sociological backgrounds different from those of Renaissance humanists and orators.

Galileo, Rosmini, Darwin. Triumviri del cattolicesimo riformatore, (1870-1918)

2024-10-08T13:59:37+00:00

Essay review of Paolo Galluzzi, Galileo, Rosmini, Darwin. Triumviri del cattolicesimo riformatore, (1870-1918). Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022.

On March 7, 2024, at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, Massimo Bucciantini and Michele Camerota presented Paolo Galluzzi’s book. Given the importance of the book for Galilean studies, we have decided to publish their speeches.