Article ID: CBB418681726

Athanasius Kircher and Vegetal Magnetism: Analogy as a Method (2018)

unapi

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, plants were the object of a primarily descriptive approach: naturalists were concerned mainly with collecting and classifying. When confronted with the splendour of great herbals and florilegia, one can easily overlook the works which deal with plants from a more theoretical or philosophical perspective. This paper examines a chapter on vegetal magnetism in Athanasius Kircher’s treatise Magnes sive de arte magnetica. My analysis shows how Kircher uses the analogy with magnets to describe the various features of plants. He uses analogy as an epistemological tool. In Kircher’s view, analogy is not merely an illustration, it also helps him to show how plants with all their more-or-less peculiar morphological and physiological properties can be included in the whole order of creation.

...More
Included in

Article Fabrizio Baldassarri; Oana Matei (2018) Manipulating Flora: Seventeenth-Century Botanical Practices and Natural Philosophy. Introduction. Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 413-419). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB418681726/

Similar Citations

Article Natacha Fabbri; (2022)
Le piante tra natura naturans e natura naturata: immagini di armonia vegetale nella prima età moderna

Chapter Tassanee Alleau; (2023)
A Bridge to the Underworld? An Explanation of the Act of Digging up Plant Roots in Early Modern Medical Fictions

Chapter Fabrizio Baldassarri; (2023)
From the Analogy with Animals to the Anatomy of Plants in Medicine: The Physiology of Living Processes from Harvey to Malpighi

Chapter Palmerino, Carla Rita; (2007)
Bodies in Water like Planets in the Skies: Uses and Abuses of Analogical Reasoning in the Study of Planetary Motion

Article Giglioni, Guido; (2014)
From the Woods of Experience to the Open Fields of Metaphysics: Bacon's Notion of Silva

Book Margaret Willes; (2015)
A Shakespearean Botanical

Book Gerit Quealy; Sumie Hasegawa Collins; Helen Mirren; (2017)
Botanical Shakespeare: An Illustrated Compendium of All the Flowers, Fruits, Herbs, Trees, Seeds, and Grasses Cited by the World's Greatest Playwright

Book Alessandro Ottaviani; (2015)
Né pianta né pietra: figure della metamorfosi al confine

Article Fabrizio Baldassarri; (2022)
A Clockwork Orange: Citrus Fruits in Early Modern Philosophy, Science, and Medicine, 1564–1668

Article Federica Rotelli; (2018)
Exotic Plants in Italian Pharmacopoeia (16th -17th Centuries)

Article González Bueno, Antonio; (2007)
El descubrimiento de la naturaleza del Nuevo Mundo: las plantas americanas en la Europa del siglo XVI

Article Doina-Cristina Rusu; (2020)
Using Instruments in the Study of Animate Beings: Della Porta's and Bacon's Experiments with Plants

Article Alain Touwaide; (2018)
Moving Plants, Transforming Medicine

Article Patrizia Cremonini; (2016)
Carte verdi nell'Archivio di Stato di Modena: l’Erbario Estense, foglie tra i fogli, un rebus, un progetto

Chapter Federica Rotelli; (2023)
The Accommodation of New World Plants in Early Modern Pharmacology: The Case of Cinchona Bark and the Challenges to Seventeenth-Century Galenism

Chapter Aleida Offerhaus; Anastasia Stefanaki; Tinde van Andel; (2023)
Not just a Garden of Simples: Arranging the Growing Floristic Diversity in the Leiden Botanical Garden (1594–1740)

Chapter Fabrizio Baldassarri; (2023)
Introduction: The World of Plants in Premodern Medical Knowledge

Book Fabrizio Baldassarri; (2023)
Plants in 16th and 17th Century: Botany between Medicine and Science

Article Elisabeth de Cambiaire; (2023)
“From the Known to the Unknown:” Nature’s Diversity, Materia Medica, and Analogy in 18th Century Botany, Through the Work of Tournefort, the Jussieu Brothers, and Linnaeus

Article Lucie Čermáková; Jana Černá; (2018)
Naked in the Old and the New World: Differences and Analogies in Descriptions of European and American herbae nudae in the Sixteenth Century

Authors & Contributors
Baldassarri, Fabrizio
Rotelli, Federica
Fabbri, Natacha
Giglioni, Guido Maria
González Bueno, Antonio
Ottaviani, Alessandro
Journals
Journal of the History of Biology
Medicina nei Secoli - Arte e Scienza
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Circumscribere: International Journal for the History of Science
Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza
Renaissance Studies
Publishers
Walter de Gruyter
Aracne
Bodleian Library
Harper Design
Concepts
Botany
Plants
Medicine
Pharmacy
Metaphors; analogies
Natural philosophy
People
Bacon, Francis, 1st Baron Verulam
Della Porta, Giovan Battista
Shakespeare, William
de l'Ecluse, Charles
Grew, Nehemiah
Jussieu, Antoine Laurent de
Time Periods
16th century
17th century
Renaissance
18th century
Early modern
Places
Europe
Italy
South America
Americas
Leiden (Netherlands)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment