Brian
Ogilvie’s 2006 macro-historical monograph The
Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe¸[1]
charts the history of naturalism through four generations of naturalists
from the late fifteenth through the early seventeenth century. He begins by
explaining that through integrating the traditions of medical humanism,
Aristotelian philosophy, and natural philosophy, Renaissance naturalists formed
a new discipline dedicated to discovering and describing plants and animals. Through
examining evidence culled from published herbals, woodcuts, drawings,
correspondence, travel journals and garden plans, Ogilvie successfully outlines
the evolution of the practice of natural history through the Renaissance and
Early Modern Europe.
In
his first chapter, Ogilvie sets the framework for Renaissance natural history.
He describes the various geographical settings for naturalists, particularly urban
centers in Western and Central Europe,[2]
scholarly communal relationships between naturalists,[3]
and the preeminence of botany over zoology in the study of nature.[4]
For this reason, Ogilvie says he will focus the remainder of his book on
botanical studies.[5] Ogilvie
begins his narrative in the late fifteenth century when naturalists
concentrated their studies on the ancient and medieval understandings of
nature.[6]
Through studying ancient writers, medical humanists used the methods and
accounts of Pliny, Galen, and especially Dioscorides to justify their studies
and frame their pursuit of medical knowledge through studying plants.[7]
In the mid-sixteenth century, the second generation of Renaissance naturalists
drifted towards a different goal. Due to the massive influx of new plants from
abroad, they recognized that the ancients had limited access to plant diversity
and sought to create their own catalogues of every possible plant[8]
through stockpiling massive collections of dried and fresh plant in curiosity
cabinets, botanical gardens and herbariums.[9]
Finally the third generation moved toward a different approach of studying
nature. Facing collections of thousands of new plant species, these naturalists
worked on taxonomically classifying the knowledge that their predecessors had
had accumulated.[10]
Ogilvie’s
analysis focuses not only on the evolution of the practitioners of natural
history from medical humanists to phytograpers to cataloguers between
1490-1590, but also gives some account of who specifically was studying natural
history and how they contributed to the larger discipline. He emphasized that
no one individual could accumulate such knowledge on their own. In fact,
frequently when collecting in the field, the naturalist was accompanied by a
team; sculptors, apothecaries, medical students, and painters.[11]
Additionally they frequently used the testimony of gardeners, midwives,
apothecaries, and peasants for their studies, though these individuals based on
their professions, were not part of the scholarly community of naturalists.[12]
Furthermore, naturalists were expected to freely share their knowledge and
specimens and did so through vast correspondence. This has strong implications
for the ways in which knowledge was shared and understood in the Renaissance.
By imagining an international community of naturalists that opposed the
hierarchy and commerciality of the general society, “unsullied by either
servitude or filthy lucre,”[13]
natural history was constructed as a liberal art that could be purely and
objectively knowledge based.
Ogilvie’s
work is comparable to much of the vast literature on botany and the scientific
art history in Early Modern Europe. In their book Wonders and the Order of
Nature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park deliberate the subject of wonder
in the integration of art and nature in early modern Europe between 1150-1750
AD. Most of the images that they discuss involve artists using their work as a
vehicle to fuse the "wonders of art and the wonders of nature."[14]
They describe many botanical paintings that were intended to bring nature to
the viewer, similar to Ogilvie’s discussion of naturalists using images to
further spread their knowledge. Additionally, in her article “Ad vivum, near het leven, from the life”[15]
Claudia Swan's analyzes the claims of "ad Vivum" and "ad
Naturam" in botanical books and discusses the evolution of this
terminology as it applied to nature illustrations. She also suggests that
botanical illustrations that were part of curiosity cabinets would allow
viewers to see subjects that instead of being present, when unavailable
"were collected by proxy…and deemed capable of standing in for an
otherwise unavailable or impermanent specimen."[16]
Her article corresponds with many of Ogilvie’s points on how plants were drawn
in various herbals, with both fruits and flowers intact. Finally, Daston and
Galison’s Objectivity[17],
published after The Science of
Describing, brings further depth to the topic of untainted studies of
botany and bring truth to nature through botanical studies. However, though there
are several parallels between this book and others in the same field, since it
offers a unique look at natural history in the Renaissance by providing
background and charting the evolution of how natural history changed over a
century.
Beginning
with the humanists in the fifteenth century and ending with the systematic
cataloguers in the early seventeenth century, Brian Ogilvie successfully
demonstrates the changing progression of natural history over four generations
of Early Modern naturalists. He also addresses unique qualities of the
botanical community and the invention of new methodology for addressing this
knowledge. His book also fits very well within the field of the Early Modern
natural history and is an essential read for those interested in Early Modern
Science, Early Modern Art, and intellectual history.
[1] Ogilvie, Brian W. The Science of Describing: Natural
History in Renaissance Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Print.
[2] Ibid p. 63
[3] Ibid p. 54
[4] Ibid p. 49
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid p. 87
[7] Ibid p. 138
[8] Ibid p. 139
[9] Ibid p. 175
[10] Ibid p. 209
[11] Ibid p. 70
[12] Ibid. 55
[13] Ibid 58
[14] Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders
and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Print p.
206
[15] Swan, Claudia “Advivum, near het leven, from the life:
Considerations on a Mode of Representation” Word and Image 11 (Oct-Dec
1995)
