Galileo’s World: Book Lists

In celebration of OU’s 125th anniversary, Galileo’s World is a series of exhibits, events, and programs at the Bizzell Memorial Library, the Sam Noble Museum, the National Weather Center, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Headington Hall, the Robert M. Bird Health Sciences Library, and the OU-Tulsa Schusterman Library. Starting August 2015 through 2016, Galileo’s World illustrates connections between science, art, literature, music, religion, philosophy, politics, and culture.

Book lists – Galleries

Click any gallery below for a list of objects displayed (author/title/date), placed in exhibition sequence:

Exhibit websiteExhibit Website: galileo.ou.edu. The Exhibit Website works on all digital devices. Click the Events tab to follow Galileo’s World opportunities on campus. Click the Location tab to learn where the 20 differently-themed galleries are. Mark favorite items, construct a personalized itinerary, and plan your visits. Jump to digitized versions of the books in the digital library, read their descriptions in the online catalog, and explore further links. The Exhibit Website does not provide lists of authors/titles/dates, nor place them in the exhibition sequence. The captions on the Exhibit Website are written for the casual visitor walking through the exhibit for the first time. For educational use, supplement it with the Exhibit Guide (described next).

iBook Exhibit GuideExhibit Guide: For a comprehensive, free Exhibit Guide offering over 1,000 pages of information and over 6,000 images, search the iBook Store for “Galileo’s World Exhibit Guide.” This Exhibit Guide is the most complete source of content for the Galileo’s World exhibition, designed for educators, group leaders, classes, and individual study beyond the first walk-through. Like the Exhibit Website, this Exhibit Guide interlinks all 20 galleries of the Galileo’s World exhibition for 7 different locations, covering about 350 rare books. Captions are roughly twice as long as at the Exhibit Website. Use the Exhibit Guide to plan pre-visit or post-visit activities, to explore more deeply during a visit, or remotely to enjoy a virtual tour with your feet up in an easy chair. The Exhibit Guide is an enhanced iBook, which works on all Apple devices (Mac and iOS) with the free iBooks app installed.

Open Educational Resources are available at oulynx.org and ShareOK. Formats include “Card sets” and “Learning Leaflets.” The latter are brief learning activities, often extracted or abbreviated from the Exhibit Guide, designed to be useful in a variety of teaching situations. Learning Leaflets contain abbreviated text juxtaposed with intriguing images to provoke reflection and discussion. Each of these OERs are “small pieces loosely joined,” adaptable to support lessons in multiple subject areas and age levels. Each Learning Leaflet consists of a two-page pdf to print front-and-back on a single sheet of paper. They are organized according to seriesgallery, and subject. Use the tags to search through what might be useful to you in your teaching and learning context. Follow the oulynx.org blog to stay up-to-date with OER development.

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Space Science after Galileo

Book lists index

Space Science after Galileo

National Weather Center.

What is it like to explore the heavens?

With his telescope, Galileo discovered mountains on the Moon, four satellites of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, dark spots tracking across the face of the Sun, the enigmatic “ears” of Saturn, and countless stars that were invisible to the unaided eye. These discoveries created a new era for investigations of the Sun, planets, space and stars.

Sun

Galileo inaugurated the era of telescopic solar observation. Galileo’s detailed, full-page copperplate engravings set a new standard for presenting evidence about the Sun. With Galileo, detailed visual representations became essential to space science. Galileo’s study of sunspots is a masterpiece of data visualization. The spots move together. They move slowly, each taking about a month to travel across the solar disk. Their shape is irregular; they form and disappear with irregular timing. The spots foreshorten as they approach the edge of the solar disk. All this proves they lie on or very near the surface, and are not little planets. Sunspots therefore suggest that the Sun and the heavens are corruptible, a tenet contrary to Aristotle but already accepted by some scientists and theologians.

1. Galileo, Istoria e Dimostrazioni Intorno alle Macchie Solari (Rome, 1613), “Letters on Sunspots”
2. Christoph Scheiner, Rosa Ursina (Bracciani, 1630), “The Rose of Orsini”

Planets

In the late 20th century, spaceships and planetary probes began to reach the Moon and other bodies of the solar system. Voyagers from Earth include the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn, which carried the Huygens planetary probe. These missions bear the names of early space scientists. Galileo, Cassini and Huygens, architects of planetary science, provided the first sketches of the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Others investigated the Earth in relation to the cosmos, discerned additional planetary satellites, and discovered unexpected solar system objects unknown to the ancients.

3. Christiaan Huygens, Systema Saturnium (The Hague, 1659), “The System of Saturn”
4. Christiaan Huygens, The Celestial Worlds Discover’d, or, Conjectures concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets (London, 1698)
5. Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Martis circa axem proprium (Bologna, 1666); De aliis Romanis observationibus macularum Martis (Bologna, 1666); De Periodo quotidianae revolutionis Martis (Bologna, 1666), “Observations in Bologna of the rotation of Mars around its axis”
6. Edmond Halley, “Astronomiae cometicae synopsis,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (London, 1705)
7. Louis Agassiz, Études sur les Glaciers (Neuchatel, 1840), “Studies on Glaciers”
8. Joseph Alphonse Adhémar, Revolutions de la Mer (Paris, 1842), “Revolutions of the Sea”

Space

Newton integrated Galileo’s terrestrial physics and Kepler’s laws of the heavens into a universal theory of gravitation, prompting new reflections on the nature of the universe itself.

The example of “nebulae” illustrates these changes. The word “nebulae” meant “clouds” to Latin meteorologists, yet it came to refer to misty clouds in the heavens revealed by telescopes but not easily resolved. Some of these nebulae came to be understood as vast clouds of interstellar gas, sites of the birth and death of stars. Others came to be known as galaxies in deep space, constantly receding in every direction from our own Milky Way.

Developments like these might seem to vindicate Copernicus who exclaimed, “So vast, without any question, is the divine handiwork of the most excellent Almighty,” in one of the sentences of De revolutionibus censored by the Inquisition in 1616.

9. Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (London, 1713), 2d ed.
10. Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (London, 1729)
11. Isaac Newton, A Treatise of the System of the World (London, 1728)
12. Thomas Wright, An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe (London, 1750)
13. Charles Messier, “Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d’Étoiles,” Memoires Academie Royale des Sciences pour 1771 (Paris, 1774), pp. 435ff., “Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters”
14. Caroline Herschel, Memoir and Correspondence (London, 1876)
15. Otto Boeddicker, The Milky Way… drawn at the Earl of Rosse’s Observatory at Birr Castle (London, 1892)
16. Edwin Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae (New Haven, 1936)

Stars

Galileo discovered more than 100 unsuspected stars when he turned his telescope toward Orion the Hunter and Taurus the Bull. Ever since, the number of known stars has continued to increase. Ptolemy described 48 constellations in the Almagest; currently there are 88 officially-recognized constellations.

Galileo inscribed the OU copy of the Starry Messenger to a poet. The human experience of the night sky has always combined scientific and imaginative aspects. Albert Einstein recognized the creativity at the heart of major scientific leaps when he wrote, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Art, music, literature and astronomy merge in a creative and ongoing exploration of the stars and constellations.

17. Hesiod, Opera (Frankfurt, 1559), “Works of Hesiod”
18. Aratus, Phenomena (Basel, 1547), “Appearances of the Skies”
19. Hyginus, Poeticon astronomicon (Venice, 1485), “Astronomical Poem”
20. Abu Ma’shar, Introductorium in astronomiam (Augsburg, 1489), “Introduction to Astronomy”
21. Prose de’ Signori Accademici Gelati (Bologna, 1671), “Essays by the Members of the Academy of Gelati”
22. Vincenzo Coronelli, Epitome Cosmografica (Cologne, 1693), “Representing the Heavens”
23. Edmond Halley, Catalogus stellarum australium (London, 1679), “Catalogue of Southern Stars”
24. Nicolas Lacaille, “Planisphere contenant les Constellations Celestes,” Memoires Academie Royale des Sciences pour 1752 (Paris, 1756)
25. John Flamsteed, Atlas Celeste (Paris, 1776), ed. J. Fortin, “Celestial Atlas”
26. J. E. Bode, Vorstellung der Gestirne (Berlin, 1782), “Atlas of the Stars”
27. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poems (London, 1843), 2 vols.; vol 1 and vol 2.
28. Lord Byron, Works (London, 1815-1824), 11 vols., ”Works”
29. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poetical Works (London, 1876-1877), 4 vols.
30. Robert Frost, “The Star-Splitter,” New Hampshire (New York, 1923)
31. Urania’s Mirror (London 1825), a boxed set of 32 cards; with Jehoshaphat Aspin, A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy (London 1825), 2d ed.

Further reading:
  • Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (Walker, 1999)
  • Stillman Drake, Galileo: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001; originally printed 1983 in the Past Masters series), discussion guide.
  • John Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford, 2010)
  • William B. Ashworth, Jr., Out of This World: The Golden Age of the Celestial Atlas, An Exhibition of Rare Books from the Collection of the Linda Hall Library, with supplement Further Out (printed catalogs; online exhibit)
  • Chet Raymo, 365 Starry Nights (Simon & Schuster, 1990)
Curator: Kerry Magruder. Links are to the exhibit website, galileo.ou.edu. For more information, download the comprehensive, free Exhibit Guide from the iBook Store. Open Educational Resources are available at oulynx.org and ShareOK.
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Galileo and Experimentation

Book lists index

Galileo and Experimentation

National Weather Center.

How do new instruments extend sensory perception, facilitate new experiments, shape new conceptions, raise new questions and promote quantitative methods?

Galileo’s empirical investigations and innovative scientific instruments opened up new worlds of discovery. His thermoscope facilitated quantitative comparison of temperatures throughout the year and under varying circumstances. When Ferdinand II de Medici founded the Academy of Experiment, or Accademia del Cimento, in Florence, the further investigations of Galileo’s successors using the thermometer, barometer and air pump led to advances in meteorology, physics, chemistry and cosmology.

1. Hero of Alexandria, Spiritalium liber (Urbini, 1575), trans. Federico Commandino, “The Book on Air”
2. Galileo Galilei, Discorso Intorno alle Cose, che Stanno in su l’Acqua (Florence, 1612), 1st ed., “Discourse on Floating Bodies”
3. Arturo Pannochieschi, Considerazioni sopra il Discorso del Sig. Galileo (Pisa, 1612), “Considerations on Galileo’s Discourse on Floating Bodies”
4. Galileo (Benedetto Castelli), Risposta alle Opposizioni del S. Lodovico delle Colombe (Florence, 1615), “Response to the Opposition of Lodovico delle Colombe”
5. Galileo Thermoscope replica (Museo Galileo)
6. Accademia del Cimento, Saggi di Naturali Esperienze (Florence, 1666), “Essays on Natural Experiences”
7. Accademia del Cimento, Saggi di Naturali Esperienze (Florence, 1667), “Essays on Natural Experiences”
8. Accademia del Cimento, Saggi di Naturali Esperienze (Naples, 1701), “Essays on Natural Experiences”
9. Blaise Pascal, Traitez de l’Equilibre des Liqueurs (Paris, 1663), “Treatise on the Equilibrium of Fluids”
10. Gaspar Schott, Technica Curiosa (Nuremberg, 1664), “Curious Technology”
11. Otto von Guericke, Experimenta nova (Amsterdam, 1672), “New Experiments”
12. Robert Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air (Oxford, 1660)
13. Isaac Newton, Opticks (London, 1704)
14. Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis, “Sur les Équations du Mouvement Relatif des Systèmes de Corps,” Journal de l’Ecole Royale Polytechnique (Paris, 1835), vol. 15, pp. 144-154., “On the Equations of the Relative Movement of Systems of Bodies”

Innovative scientific instruments, from Galileo’s telescope to his thermoscope, seemed almost like natural magic in the ways they opened up new worlds of discovery. These instruments manifested phenomena never perceived by the senses before, wonders that seemed contrary to common experience.  

Galileo’s thermoscope made it possible to refute a then-widespread belief that well water grows warmer in the winter than in the summer.  Well water does seem warmer in the winter, once our senses grow accustomed to colder temperatures, but the thermoscope demonstrated that it is actually colder in the winter than in the summer.

The barometer revealed how to measure the specific weight of the atmosphere as it presses down upon us. A friend of Galileo’s reported that it was impossible to siphon water over a hill more than 32 feet high. Despite persistent, baffling attempts, it proved impossible to pump water any higher. Galileo’s student Torricelli interpreted this unexpected phenomenon of hydraulics in terms of a balance weighing the atmosphere. The atmosphere pushes down with a pressure that can lift a weight equivalent to a column of water 32 feet high. Galileo suggested that Torricelli use mercury instead of water, which reduced the height of the barometer to less than 800 mm.

At mid-century, Otto Von Guericke demonstrated his air-pump before a crowd of eyewitnesses at Magdeburg by evacuating two 20-inch diameter hemispheres. The pressure of the atmosphere held the hemispheres together so strongly that four pairs of horses in harness together on each side could not pull them apart. This “miracle at Magdeburg,” first reported by Gaspar Schott in 1657, was explained in Guericke’s Experimenta Nova (1672).

Experimental use of instruments like the thermometer, barometer and air pump promoted a new way of doing science in which meteorology often led the way.

Further reading:
  • Stillman Drake, Galileo: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001; originally printed 1983 in the Past Masters series), discussion guide.
  • John Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford, 2010)
  • Matteo Valerian, Galileo: Engineer (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Springer, 2008)
Curator: Kerry Magruder. Links are to the exhibit website, galileo.ou.edu. For more information, download the comprehensive, free Exhibit Guide from the iBook Store. Open Educational Resources are available at oulynx.org and ShareOK.
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Galileo and Kepler

Book lists index

Galileo and Kepler

National Weather Center.

Who was Kepler, and why was a telescope named after him?

The Kepler space telescope launched in March, 2009, to search for terrestrial planets around other suns. One month later, five Jupiter-like planets had been discovered. As of 2015, the Kepler telescope has discovered a total of more than 1,000 confirmed planets.

OU’s Kepler collection includes all 11 major works published during his lifetime and a large number of his minor works. In his immediate response to Galileo’s telescopic discoveries, Kepler suggested that unknown planets might exist, and might be inhabited.

1. Johann Kepler, Dissertatio cum Sidereo (Frankfurt, 1611), “Conversation on Galileo’s Starry Messenger”
2. John Wilkins, A Discovery of a New World… in the Moon (London, 1684)
3. Johannes Kepler, Astronomia nova (Heidelberg, 1609), “The New Astronomy”
4. Johann Kepler, Dioptrice (Augsburg, 1611), “Optics of Lenses”
5. Johann Kepler, Strena, seu de nive sexangula (Frankfurt on Main, 1611), “On the Snowflake, or the Six-Angled Crystal”
6. Johannes Kepler, Tabulae Rudolphinae (Gorlitz, 1627), “The Rudolphine Tables”
7. Johann Kepler, Wilhelm Schickard and Matthias Bernegger, Epistolae (Strasburg, 1672 & 1673), “Letters”
8. Johann Kepler and Jacob Bartsch, Admonitio ad astronomos (Frankfurt, 1630), “Admonition to Astronomers”
9. Maria Cunitz, Urania propitia (Oels, 1650), “The Generous Muse of the Heavens”

Further reading:
  • Stillman Drake, Galileo: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001; originally printed 1983 in the Past Masters series), discussion guide.
  • James Voelkel, Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy (Oxford, 1999)
  • Max Caspar, Kepler (Dover, 1993)
Curator: Kerry Magruder. Links are to the exhibit website, galileo.ou.edu. For more information, download the comprehensive, free Exhibit Guide from the iBook Store. Open Educational Resources are available at oulynx.org and ShareOK.
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Copernicus and Meteorology

Book lists index

Copernicus and Meteorology

National Weather Center.

How does meteorology facilitate interdisciplinary discovery?

From antiquity to the present, meteorology has always been a meeting place of many disciplines. Astronomy, optics, chemistry and the geosciences are just a few of the disciplines once pursued in close association with meteorology. Throughout history, meteorologists have adopted innovative methodologies to address emerging research problems that require multidisciplinary expertise. 

1. Camille Flammarion, L’Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888), “The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology.”
2. Aristotle, Meteorologicorum (Paris, 1556), “Meteorology.”
3. Erasmus Reinhold, Demonstratio halonis (Wittenberg, ca. 1550), manuscript, “Demonstration of the Halo.”
4. Pierre D’Ailly, Meterororum (Leipzig, 1506), “Meteorology.”
5. Seneca, Naturalium quaestionum (Venice, 1522), “Natural Questions.”
6. Paracelsus, Das Büch meteororum (Cologne, 1566), “The Book of Meteorology.”
7. Paracelsus, Prognostication (Augsburg, 1536), “Forecasts.”
8. René Descartes, Les Météores, in Discours de la Methode (Leiden, 1637), “On Meteorology,” in “Discourse on Method.”
9. Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Amsterdam, 1617), 3d. edition, “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.”
10. Leonard Digges, A Prognostication Everlasting of Right Good Effect…; Lately corrected and augmented by Thomas Digges his sonne (London, 1605).
11. Althanasius Kircher, Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1665), “Subterranean World.”
12. Ruder Boscovic, Sopra il Turbine (Rome, 1749), “On the Tornado.”
13. John P. Finley, Tornadoes: What they are and how to observe them (New York, 1887), copy 2.
14. John Dalton, Meteorological Essays (London, 1793).
15. Alfred Wegener, The Origin of Continents and Oceans (London, 1924).

Further reading:
  • Stillman Drake, Galileo: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001; originally printed 1983 in the Past Masters series), discussion guide.
  • Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (Walker, 1999)
  • Maurice Finocchiaro, The Essential Galileo (Hackett, 2008)
Curator: Kerry Magruder. Links are to the exhibit website, galileo.ou.edu. For more information, download the comprehensive, free Exhibit Guide from the iBook Store. Open Educational Resources are available at oulynx.org and ShareOK.
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Galileo and Microscopy

Book lists index

Through the Eyes of the Lynx: Galileo and Microscopy

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (Spring/Summer 2015).

What is it like to reveal the wonders and marvels of the very small?

“I have contemplated a great many animals with infinite admiration; among them, the flea is most horrible, the mosquito and the moth are beautiful; and with great satisfaction I have seen how flies and other tiny creatures can walk attached to mirrors, and even upside down.”
Galileo, letter to Cesi, 1624

Galileo and the Academy of the Lynx were responsible for the first published report of observations made with a microscope (Apiarium, 1625), as well as for the telescope. At the same time Galileo was making his telescopic discoveries, he was also experimenting with lenses to magnify the small. Another member of the Lynx, Johann Faber, named Galileo’s new instrument a microscope. 

In antiquity, the lynx was renowned for possessing sharp eyesight at night. The founder of the Academy of the Lynx, Federigo Cesi, believed that the eyes of the Lynx would peer more deeply into the secrets of nature than ever before. The keen eyes of the Academy of the Lynx stretched the boundaries of European thought in the life sciences just as with Galileo’s discoveries in the physical sciences.

The Academy of the Lynx

A new phenomenon characterized science in the 17th century: the scientific society. One of the earliest and most important was the Academy of the Lynx (Accademia dei Lincei). Federigo Cesi, Duke of Aquasparta, founded the Lynx in 1603. Galileo soon became the best-known member. For the rest of his life, Cesi provided Galileo and other Lynx with crucial intellectual, financial, and moral support. The works of the Lynx spanned all fields of science, including the most important early natural history of America.
In founding the Lynx, Cesi was inspired by another society, the Academy of the Secrets of Nature (Accademia Secretorum Naturae), established by Giambattista della Porta in Naples. Della Porta in turn became an early member of the Lynx. Della Porta’s works and his relationship with Cesi throw light on the Lynx’s formative years.

1. Giambattista della Porta, Phytognomonica (Naples, 1588), “Plant Anatomy”
2. Giambattista della Porta, Magiae naturalis (Naples, 1589), “Natural Magic”
3. Giambattista della Porta, Natural Magick (London, 1658), “Natural Magic”
4. Giambattista della Porta, De furtivis literarum notis (Naples, 1563), “On Secret Writing”
5. Lettere di Galileo Galilei al Principe Federigo Cesi (1629?), “Letters from Galileo to Prince Federigo Cesi”
6. Giambattista della Porta, Della Fisonomia di Tutto il Corpo Humano (Rome, 1637), “Human Anatomy”
7. Francesco Stelluti and Federigo Cesi, Trattato del Legno Fossile Minerale (Rome, 1637), “Treatise on Fossil Mineral Wood”
8. Giambattista della Porta, De aeris transmutationibus (Rome, 1610), “On the Transformations of the Atmosphere”

Apiarium: The Lincean Explorer

“so, to make it capable of being minutely investigated with the eyes, we applied the Lincean explorer, that is to say, the microscope, a small viewing glass enclosed in a tube.” G.B. Ferrari

In 1623, Galileo’s supporter and friend, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a patron of the Academy of the Lynx, became Pope Urban VIII. Barberini’s election seemed to assure Galileo of support from the highest level in the Catholic Church. To honor Urban and cement their relationship, the Academy of the Lynx published several works featuring the Barberini family crest of three busy bees. One of these works, a study of bees called the Apiarium, was the first published report of observations made with a microscope.  Just as Galileo’s telescope brought near the distant Moon and stars, the microscope enabled the Academy of the Lynx to fathom the secrets of the small, and portray a world never seen before.
 
9. Galileo, Il Saggiatore (Rome, 1623), “The Assayer.” 1st ed., usual state.
10. Francesco Stelluti, Persio (Rome, 1630). “Persius.”

11. Giuseppe Campani Microscope replica (Museo Galileo).
12. Giovanni Battista Ferrari, Flora, seu, De florum cultura (Amsterdam, 1664). “Flowers, or, On the Cultivation of Flower Gardens”
13. Giovanni Battista Ferrari, Flora; overo, Cultura di Fiori (Rome, 1638), “Flowers, or, On the Cultivation of Flower Gardens.”
14. Francesco Stelluti and Federigo Cesi, Apiarium (1625), “On Bees.”

Marvels and Wonders

“So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite ’em, And so proceed ad infinitum.” Jonathan Swift, “On Poetry: a Rhapsody” (1733)

As an instrument of discovery, the microscope revealed unseen worlds of surprising wonder and complexity. Anything placed under its lens became something new and different. The common flea and other specimens were transformed into fantastic otherworldly creatures which observers captured in detailed illustrations many thousands of times larger than life. As microscopy advanced, progress was made in optical design, lens grinding, and the mounts that held the parts together. In some cases, more complex designs were preferred for “refined intellectual entertainment.” The simple designs proved more effective for research, especially when examining specimens out in the field.

15. Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London, 1665), “On Microscopy.”
16. Robert Hooke, Philosophical Collections (London, 1679).

17. Johann Francisco Griendel, Micrographia nova (Nuremberg, 1687), “The New Micrographia.”
18. Philippo Buonanni, Observationes circa viventia… cum micrographia curiosa (Rome, 1691).
19. Antonio van Leeuwenhoek, Arcana naturae (Delft, 1695).
20. Antonio van Leeuwenhoek, Continuatio arcanorum naturae detectorum (Delft, 1697).

21. Antonio van Leeuwenhoek, Microscope replica, Boerhaave Museum (Leiden, 2015).

Inquiries and Investigations

Innovations in microscopy supported sustained research in diverse subject areas.
Microscopic investigations of human anatomy led to discoveries of red blood cells, papillae on the tongue, alveoli in the lungs, ova, and spermatozoa. The microscope facilitated study of the embryological development, yielding knowledge about life cycles of insects and aquatic animals and the development of the chick embryo. It made visible the processes of metamorphosis, the remarkable “death cycle” of tardigrades, and how hydra reproduce and feed. Microscope usage exceeded mere observation of the small. Naturalists developed advanced techniques for microscopic dissection, controlled experimentation, and measurement.

22. Jan Swammerdam, The Book of Nature, or the History of Insects (London, 1758), “Natural History of Insects”
23. Marcello Malpighi, Dissertatio epistolica de formatione pulli in ovo (London, 1673).
24. Francesco Redi, Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti (Florence, 1668).
25. Nicolas Hartsoeker, Essay de dioptrique (Paris, 1694).
26. Lazzaro Spallanzani, Opuscoli di fisica animale, e vegetabile (Modena, 1776), 2 vols.
27. Abraham Trembley, Memoires pour servir a l’histoire d’un genre de polypes d’eu douce, a bras en forme de cornes (Leiden, 1744).

Small Worlds Everywhere

minima cura si maxima vis
“Take care of small things if you want to obtain the greatest results”
Motto of the Academy of the Lynx


During the eighteenth century, microscopes became more affordable and widely available. George Adams’ Micrographia Illustrata (1771) and Philip Henry Gosse’s Evening at the Microscope (1859) show microscopes served both as research tools and as sources of refined intellectual “edutainment.” Today, health care workers in remote areas diagnose diseases using inexpensive smartphone-based microscopes, while advanced-generation Scanning Electron Microscopes serve as key research tools in state-of-the-art laboratories. At the University of Oklahoma, researchers at the Sam Noble Museum and the Noble Electron Microscopy Lab push forward the frontiers of knowledge and bring microscopy to schools across Oklahoma.

28. George Adams, Micrographia Illustrata (London, 1746).
29. George Adams, Micrographia Illustrata (London, 1747).
30. George Adams, Essays on the Microscope (London, 1787).
31. Culpeper Microscopes (40 cm and 30 cm).
32. Philip Henry Gosse, Evenings at the Microscope, or, Researches among the Minuter Organs and Forms of Animal Life (London, 1884).

Further reading:
  • Federigo Cesi and Francesco Stelluti, Apiarium (Rome, 1625); trans. Clara Sue Kidwell, 1970
  • Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (Walker, 1999)
  • David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx (Chicago, 2002)
  • Clara Pinto-Coreia, The Ovary of Eve: Egg and Sperm and Preformation (Stanford, 2002)
Curators: Kerry Magruder, James Burnes, Tom Luczycki, Katrina Menard. Links are to the exhibit website, galileo.ou.edu. For more information, download the comprehensive, free Exhibit Guide from the iBook Store. Open Educational Resources are available at oulynx.org and ShareOK.
Posted in Exhibits and events | Tagged | 1 Comment

Galileo, Natural History and the Americas

Book lists index

Through the Eyes of the Lynx: Galileo, Natural History and the Americas

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (Fall 2015).

How did the natural knowledge of Native Americans shape European science in the age of Galileo?

“In the last few days, when I was in the house of His Excellency the Marquis Cesi, I saw the pictures of 500 Indian plants, and I was expected to affirm either that this or that one was a fiction (denying that such plants were to be found in the world)…, yet neither I nor anyone else present knew their qualities, virtues and effects.”
Galileo to Piero Dini in Rome, May 21, 1611

The king of Spain commissioned a physician, Francisco Hernandez, to compile Native American plant and animal knowledge. Hernandez worked closely with Aztec artists and physicians in central Mexico. The Academy of the Lynx counted Galileo among its members along with some of the leading naturalists of the day. They worked together to publish a monumental natural history of the Americas based upon the manuscript Hernandez prepared for the king.

In antiquity, the lynx was renowned for possessing sharp eyesight at night. The founder of the Academy of the Lynx, Federigo Cesi, believed that the eyes of the Lynx would peer more deeply into the secrets of nature than ever before. The keen eyes of the Academy of the Lynx stretched the boundaries of European thought in the life sciences just as with Galileo’s discoveries in the physical sciences.

The Academy of the Lynx

A new phenomenon characterized science in the 17th century: the scientific society. One of the earliest and most important was the Academy of the Lynx (Accademia dei Lincei). Federigo Cesi, Duke of Aquasparta, founded the Lynx in 1603. Galileo soon became the best-known member. For the rest of his life, Cesi provided Galileo and other Lynx with crucial intellectual, financial, and moral support. The works of the Lynx spanned all fields of science, including the most important early natural history of America.
In founding the Lynx, Cesi was inspired by another society, the Academy of the Secrets of Nature (Accademia Secretorum Naturae), established by Giambattista della Porta in Naples. Della Porta in turn became an early member of the Lynx. Della Porta’s works and his relationship with Cesi throw light on the Lynx’s formative years.

1. Giambattista della Porta, Phytognomonica (Naples, 1588), “Plant Anatomy”
2. Giambattista della Porta, Magiae naturalis (Naples, 1589), “Natural Magic”
3. Giambattista della Porta, Natural Magick (London, 1658), “Natural Magic”
4. Giambattista della Porta, De furtivis literarum notis (Naples, 1563), “On Secret Writing”
5. Lettere di Galileo Galilei al Principe Federigo Cesi (1629?), “Letters from Galileo to Prince Federigo Cesi”
6. Giambattista della Porta, Della Fisonomia di Tutto il Corpo Humano (Rome, 1637), “Human Anatomy”
7. Francesco Stelluti and Federigo Cesi, Trattato del Legno Fossile Minerale (Rome, 1637), “Treatise on Fossil Mineral Wood”
8. Giambattista della Porta, De aeris transmutationibus (Rome, 1610), “On the Transformations of the Atmosphere”

Old Science, New Discoveries

Members of the Academy of the Lynx were thoroughly familiar with classical works. As they explored novelties in the natural world, they searched for clues within ancient texts to aid their understanding. Each endeavor motivated, guided and shaped the other.
Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1454 led to a more widespread availability of ancient as well as modern texts, making it easier to compare them with each other and with new natural knowledge.
New discoveries did not diminish interest in the old sources; rather, scientists were also scholars who turned to the old to help make sense of the new. Ancient texts helped make sense of the significance of unexpected discoveries, facilitating and at the same time being challenged by new observations and interpretations.

9. Francesco Stelluti, Persio (Rome, 1630), “Persius”
10. Aristotle, De animalibus (Venice, 1476), “On Animals”
11. Theophrastus, Dell’ Historia delle Plante (Venice, 1549), “The Natural History of Plants”
12. Pliny the Elder, The Historie of the World (London, 1601), “Natural History”
13. Claudius Ptolemy, Geographia universalis (Basel, 1545), “Universal Geography”
14. Sebastian Munster, Cosmographey (Basel, 1574), “Geography of the World”

Growing a Museum: Herbs and Gardens

An explosion of 16th-century herbals dramatically revived investigation into the structure and causes of plants. With ongoing colonization and exploration came a vast increase in the number of known plants. With the Printing Revolution came the ability to reproduce plant illustrations by the hundreds. Yet the sheer quantity and unexpected diversity of new botanical information proved difficult to assimilate. Ancient categories of classification proved insufficient, as did the old doctrine of signatures, according to which essential natures might be discerned through direct observation. The search for new keys to the natural order occupied naturalists who created a new science of botany.

15. Fabio Colonna, Phytobasanos (Naples, 1592), “The Interrogation of Plants”
16. Pietro de’ Crescenzi, Ruralium commodorum (Augsburg, 1471), “The Advantages of Country Living”
17. Giovanni Battista Ferrari, Flora, seu, De florum cultura (Amsterdam, 1664), “Flowers, or, On the Cultivation of Flower Gardens”
18. Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium (Basel, 1542), “The Natural History of Plants”
19. Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium (Lyon, 1551), “The Natural History of Plants”
20. John Gerard, The Herball (London, 1597)

Strange Creatures

The world revealed to early modern explorers seemed filled with enigmatic creatures. What emblematic meaning might all the strange new creatures hold, who went unmentioned in the ancient sources? How many of the reports of giants, dragons, and other unusual animals should be believed? Fascinated with novel discoveries and unexpected marvels, naturalists sought to relate both the old and new, the enigmatic and the emblematic, in an ongoing dialogue of natural wonder and natural order.

21. Galileo, Discorsi à Due Nuove Scienze (Leiden, 1638), “Discourse on Two New Sciences”
22. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (Venice, 1672), “The Angry Orlando”
23. Torquato Tasso, The Recoverie of Jerusalem (London, 1624)
24. Galileo, Considerazioni al Tasso (Venice, 1793), octavo, “Considerations on Tasso”
25. Edward Topsell, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes (London, 1658)
26. Ulysses Aldrovandi, Serpentarum et draconum historiae (Bologna, 1640), “Natural History of Serpents and Dragons”
27. Georges Cuvier, Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles du quadrupèdes (Paris, 1812), vol. 2, plate V.

New Science to an Old World

Francisco Hernandez lived among the Aztecs in central Mexico in the late 16th century. He collected their knowledge of plants and medicine. He employed Aztec artists. He preserved the Nahuatl names. The persistence of the Nahautl names reflects Hernandez’ respect for Native American natural knowledge, and also illustrates how the new plants resisted classification according to traditional European categories.
Publishing a definitive edition of the manuscript of Hernandez comprised the central, albeit elusive, goal of Cesi and the Academy of the Lynx. In 1611, Galileo expressed amazement at the wealth of plant knowledge relayed by Hernandez, entirely unknown to Aristotle and Pliny. European classification schemes proved inadequate, and available illustrations remained ambiguous. The landmark project, finally accomplished in 1651, more than 70 years after Hernandez’ sojourn in central Mexico, symbolizes the transformation of natural history into a global endeavor.

28. Francisco Hernandez, Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium Mexicanorum historia (Rome, 1651), “A New Natural History of the Plants, Animals and Minerals of Mexico”
29. Ferrante Imperato, Dell’ Historia Naturale (Naples, 1599), “On Natural History”
30. Carolus Clusius, Exoticorum (Antwerp, 1605), “Non-European Plants”
31. Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Historia naturae (Antwerp, 1635), “Natural History”
32. Abraham Munting, Phytographia curiosa (Amsterdam, 1702), “Representations of Plants”
33. Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica (London, 1707-1725), 2 vols; vol 1 and vol 2.
34. Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden (Dublin, 1790)

Further reading:
  • Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (Walker, 1999)
  • David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx (Chicago, 2002)
  • Simon Varey, ed., The Mexican Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco Hernandez (Stanford, 2002)
Curators: Kerry Magruder, Tom Luczycki, James Burnes, Carolyn Scearce, Jackson Pope, Katrina Menard. Links are to the exhibit website, galileo.ou.edu. For more information, download the comprehensive, free Exhibit Guide from the iBook Store. Open Educational Resources are available at oulynx.org and ShareOK.
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