Investigations of Nature

Join Domenico Bertoloni Meli on a detailed journey through the understanding and investigations of nature, when profound changes transformed the intellectual landscape and the beginning of European expansion and colonialism. His book takes us on a guided tour through history, when the religious unity of Europe was broken with huge political, intellectual, and economic consequences, while global history took on new meanings, with European voyages of exploration and exploitation being interwoven with geographical knowledge, warfare, and trade. After a brief introduction, each part of this book--from the Renaissance to the Epistemic Revolution to the Enlightenment--opens with a chapter discussing a defining characteristic: geography and navigation characterize the Renaissance as the age of discovery and colonialism; astronomy and optics characterize the Epistemic Revolution as the age of new instruments, such as the telescope; and universal gravity in Newton's time characterizes the Enlightenment as the age of quantification, with welcome and unwelcome consequences and reflection on the status of our theories. Heavily illustrated with a practical historiographic guide and bibliography for further reading, Investigations of Nature is an indispensable teaching tool for anyone seeking an accessible survey of the Renaissance or the Enlightenment.

Domenico Bertoloni Meli is provost professor in history and philosophy of science and medicine at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has received several fellowships and awards, including a Wellcome Fellowship at Cambridge University, a Dibner Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.