OU History of Science Collections

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.

Book lists index

The Sky at Night

What is the artistic and scientific heritage of the sky at night?

When Galileo observed the belt and sword of Orion the Hunter, and the Pleiades star cluster on the back of Taurus the Bull, the background of night gave way before his eyes: His telescope resolved an astonishing number of unexpected stars never seen before.

The wonder of the sky at night is common to science and to art. From the Renaissance to the dawn of the modern age, art and science fused together in the representation of the stars and constellations. These star maps combined state-of-the-art scientific observation of the cosmos with appreciation for the aesthetic dimension of the sky at night.

1. Galileo, Sidereus nuncius (Venice, 1610), photograph of starfields.
2. Alessandro Piccolomini, De le Stelle Fisse (Venice, 1540), “On the Fixed Stars”
3. Ptolemy, Opera (Basel, 1541), “Works”
4. Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Basel, 1566), 2d ed., “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres”
5. Johann Bayer, Uranometria (Ulm, 1661), bound with Johann Bayer, Explicatio characterum (Ulm, 1697), “Measuring the Heavens”
6. Johann Kepler, De stella nova in pede serpentarii (Prague, 1606), “On the New Star in the Foot of the Serpent Handler”
7. Stanislaw Lubieniecki, Theatrum cometicum (Amsterdam, 1666-68), “Theater of Comets”
8. Johann and Elisabeth Hevelius, Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia (Gdansk, 1690), “The Firmament of King Sobiesci, or Map of the Heavens”
9. Johann and Elisabeth Hevelius, Prodromus Astronomiae (Gdansk, 1690), bound with the Uranographia, “Preliminary Discourse for Astronomy”
10. Johann and Elisabeth Hevelius, Catalogus stellarum fixarum (Gdansk, 1687), bound with the Uranographia, “Catalog of Fixed Stars”
11. Vincenzo Coronelli, Celestial Globe Gores (Paris, 1693; reprint ca. 1800 using original plates), “Celestial Globe Gores”
12. Heinrich Scherer, Typus totius orbis terraquei geographice (Munich, 1700), “A Geographical Map of the Terraqueous Globe”
13. John Flamsteed, Atlas coelestis (London, 1729), “Celestial Atlas”
14. Johann Bode, Uranographia (Berlin, 1801), “Map of the Heavens”
15. Joseph J. von Littrow, Atlas des Gestirnten Himmels (Stuttgart, 1839), “Atlas of the Starry Heavens”
16. Catherine Whitwell, An Astronomical Catechism (London, 1818)

Further reading:

• 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)
• Nick Kanas, Star Maps: History, Artistry and Cartography, 2d ed (Springer, 2012)
• 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.

Works listed here are on display in Bizzell Memorial Library (Fall 2015, Summer-Spring 2016) and also at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (Spring 2016).
We thank Mark White, Director of the Fred Jones Museum, Francesca Giani (curator), Melissa Smith (educator) and all the Museum staff for incorporating many books described in “Galileo and the Telescope,” “The Moon and the Telescope,” “Galileo and Perspective Drawing,” and “The Sky at Night,” into their Spring 2016 exhibition, “An Artful Observation of the Cosmos.” Each of these galleries takes its point of departure from Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius (1610), which is listed as the first item for each of these galleries. Museum curator Francesca Giani took these themes to heart and illustrated them with art from the Museum. Her captions for that exhibit, relating the books to the art, are based in varying degrees upon the original captions provided beforehand in the Exhibit Guide and the Exhibit website. The melding of art and science by the Fred Jones Museum in their exhibit is a powerful example of the ability of Galileo’s World to throw light upon the world of OU today.

Book lists index

Galileo and Perspective Drawing

What was it like to be an astronomer in an era when art and mathematics were intertwined?

In the Starry Messenger (1610), Galileo reported his discovery of four satellites of Jupiter and mountains on the Moon. These sensational telescopic discoveries were made possible by Galileo’s training and experience in Renaissance art. Galileo’s scientific discoveries occurred in the context of a specific artistic culture which possessed sophisticated mathematical techniques for drawing with linear perspective and handling light and shadow. When Galileo peered through his telescope and discovered mountains on the Moon, he did so because he was seeing with the eyes of an artist. Contemporaries without artistic training were not able to see what Galileo saw; they were able to look but not to see.

1. Galileo, Sidereus nuncius (Venice, 1610), photograph of Moon engravings.
2. Euclid, Elements of Geometrie (London, 1570), trans. Henry Billingsley., “Elements of Geometry”
3. Ibn al-Haytham, Opticae thesaurus (Basel, 1572), “Treasury of Optics”
4. John Peckham, Perspectiva (Paris, 1556), “Perspective”
5. Athanasius Kircher, Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Rome, 1646), “The Great Art of Light and Shadow”
6. Leon Battista Alberti, “On Painting,” in Opuscoli Morali (Venice, 1568), “Moral Essays”
7. Niccolo Tartaglia, Opere… Nova scientia (Venice, 1606), “Works. . . A New Science”
8. Luca Pacioli, Divina proportione (Venice, 1509), “The Divine Proportion”
9. Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della Pittura (Paris, 1651), 1st ed., “Treatise on Painting”
10. Albrecht Dürer, Institutionem geometricarum (Paris, 1535), “Principles of Geometry”
11. Lorenzo Sirigatti, La Pratica di Prospettiva (Venice, 1596), “The Practice of Perspective”
12. Jean François Nicéron, La Perspectiva Curieuse (Paris, 1663), “The Curiosities of Perspective”

Further reading:

• Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Mirror, the Window and the Telescope (Cornell, 2009)
• J.V. Field, The Invention of Infinity (Oxford, 1997)
• Martin Kemp, The Science of Art (Yale, 1992)
• Mark A. Peterson, Galileo’s Muse (Harvard, 2011)

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.

Works listed here are on display in Bizzell Memorial Library (Fall 2015, Summer-Spring 2016) and also at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (Spring 2016).
We thank Mark White, Director of the Fred Jones Museum, Francesca Giani (curator), Melissa Smith (educator) and all the Museum staff for incorporating many books described in “Galileo and the Telescope,” “The Moon and the Telescope,” “Galileo and Perspective Drawing,” and “The Sky at Night,” into their Spring 2016 exhibition, “An Artful Observation of the Cosmos.” Each of these galleries takes its point of departure from Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius (1610), which is listed as the first item for each of these galleries. Museum curator Francesca Giani took these themes to heart and illustrated them with art from the Museum. Her captions for that exhibit, relating the books to the art, are based in varying degrees upon the original captions provided beforehand in the Exhibit Guide and the Exhibit website. The melding of art and science by the Fred Jones Museum in their exhibit is a powerful example of the ability of Galileo’s World to throw light upon the world of OU today.

Book lists index

The Moon and the Telescope

What is the artistic and scientific heritage of the Moon?

Galileo’s Starry Messenger (1610) set off the 17th-century race for the Moon – not a race to go there, but a race to map its surface. To stare directly at the Full Moon is blinding at night; surface detail is entirely washed out. To map the Moon, one must examine the “shadow line” night by night as it passes across the face of the Moon. Light moves back and forth, first one way and then the other, casting shadows in both directions at opposite phases. The lunar map gradually emerges as a composite representation of many individual topographical studies. From the Renaissance to the dawn of the modern age, art and science fused together in the representation of the Moon.

1. Galileo, Sidereus nuncius (Venice, 1610), photograph of Moon engravings.
2. William Gilbert, De mundo nostro sublunari philosophia nova (Amsterdam, 1651), “New Philosophy, about our World beneath the Moon”
3. Francesco Fontana, Novae coelestium terrestriumq[ue] rerum observationes (Naples, 1646), “New Celestial and Terrestrial Observations”
4. Johann Hevelius, Selenographia (Gdansk, 1647), “Map of the Moon”
5. Giambattista Riccioli, Almagestum novum (Bologna, 1651), Part 1, “The New Almagest.”
6. Chérubin d’Orléans, La dioptrique oculaire (Paris, 1671), “The Optics of the Eye”
7. James Nasmyth and James Carpenter, Der Mond (Leipzig, 1876), “The Moon”

Further reading:

• Scott L. Montgomery, The Moon and the Western Imagination (University of Arizona, 1999)
• Andrew Planck, What’s Hot on the Moon Tonight (Moonscape Publishing, 2014)

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.

Works listed here are on display in Bizzell Memorial Library (Fall 2015, Summer-Spring 2016) and also at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (Spring 2016).
We thank Mark White, Director of the Fred Jones Museum, Francesca Giani (curator), Melissa Smith (educator) and all the Museum staff for incorporating many books described in “Galileo and the Telescope,” “The Moon and the Telescope,” “Galileo and Perspective Drawing,” and “The Sky at Night,” into their Spring 2016 exhibition, “An Artful Observation of the Cosmos.” Each of these galleries takes its point of departure from Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius (1610), which is listed as the first item for each of these galleries. Museum curator Francesca Giani took these themes to heart and illustrated them with art from the Museum. Her captions for that exhibit, relating the books to the art, are based in varying degrees upon the original captions provided beforehand in the Exhibit Guide and the Exhibit website. The melding of art and science by the Fred Jones Museum in their exhibit is a powerful example of the ability of Galileo’s World to throw light upon the world of OU today.

Book lists index

Galileo and Sports

Location: Headington Hall, University of Oklahoma, Athletics Department.

What would Coach Galileo say?

How many Athletic Departments buy rare books for their university libraries? Three years in a row, the Sooners have contributed a rare book to the OU Libraries Galileo collection: In 2014, the major book of Galileo’s father, a prominent music theorist; in 2013, a beautiful work on perspective drawing by Lorenzo Sirigatti, which Galileo studied; and in 2012, a handwritten manuscript of lectures by the leading astronomer in Rome during Galileo’s telescopic discoveries, never before published and new to scholars. The Galileo’s World exhibition is a way of saying thank you to the OU Sooners for bringing these rare treasures home to Oklahoma.

1. Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (Basel, 1545), 2d ed., “On the Fabric of the Human Body”
2. Girolamo Mercuriale, De arte gymnastica (Paris, 1577), “The Art of Gymnastics”
3. Giovanni Borelli, De motu animalium (Leiden, 1685), “On the Motion of Animals”
4. John Pugh, A Treatise on Muscular Action (London, 1794)
5. Galileo, Discorsi à Due Nuove Scienze, in Opera (Bologna, 1656), 2 vols., vol 1 and vol 2, “Discourse on Two New Sciences”
6. Baldassarre Castiglione, The Courtier (London, 1724)

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.

Book lists index

Galileo and the Health Sciences

Location: Robert M. Bird Library, University of Oklahoma, Health Sciences Campus, Oklahoma City.

How might friends of Galileo have practiced health care?

“I have been in my bed for five weeks, oppressed with weakness and other infirmities from which my age, seventy four years, permits me not to hope release. Added to this (O misery!) the sight of my right eye — that eye whose labors (dare I say it) have had such glorious results — is for ever lost. That of the left, which was and is imperfect, is rendered null by continual weeping.”
Galileo, Letter to Élie Diodati (4 July 1637), trans. Mary Allan-Olney, The Private Life of Galileo, p. 278.

Galileo studied medicine and was once called as an expert medical witness in a trial. A friend of Galileo’s who was a physician in Venice invented a device to measure the pulse. Galileo inscribed an OU copy of a first edition to another physician in Venice. One of the leading physicians of the Renaissance recommended Galileo for a university position. Publication of Galileo’s Dialogo was held up for years due to an outbreak of plague. Galileo’s daughter served the health care needs of many, including Galileo. A physician-engineer follower of Galileo applied the physics of the lever and other simple machines to the working of the musculoskeletal system. The use of artistic illustrations in the service of anatomy remains one of the most striking developments of medicine in Galileo’s world. Explore this gallery to discover connections between Galileo’s world and the world of the Health Sciences at OU today.

Galileo and Anatomy (Fall 2015)

Galileo’s intellectual circle included artists, engineers and physicians. Leonardo da Vinci was not the only artist who engaged in dissections and constructed machines. Renaissance artists studied anatomy with medical students, engineers studied drawing with artists, and physicians applied mechanical concepts to open up new ways of understanding the human body. The common conversation among artists, engineers and physicians is manifest in the artistic and mechanical aspects of these anatomical works.

1. Mondino dei Luzzi, Anothomia (Venice, 1507), “Anatomy.”
2. Mondino dei Luzzi, Anatomia (Marburg, 1541), “Anatomy,” ed. Johann Dryander.
3. Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani (Paris, 1545), “On the Dissection of the Parts of the Human Body.”
4. Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (Basel, 1543), “On the Fabric of the Human Body.”
5. Andreas Vesalius, Epistola (Basel, 1546), “Correspondence.”
6. Matteo Realdo Colombo, De re anatomica (Venice, 1559), “On Anatomy.”
7. Bartolomeo Eustachi, Tabulae anatomicae (Geneva, 1716), “Anatomical Illustrations.”
8. Galileo, Difesa contro alle calunnie & imposture di Baldessar Capra (Venice, 1607), “Defense against the Calumnies and Imposture of Baldasar Capra!”, title page photograph.
9. Santorio Santorio, Commentaria in canonis Avicennae (Venice, 1646), “Commentary on the Canon of Ibn Sina (Avicenna).”
10. Galileo Thermoscope replica (Museo Galileo).
11. Giovanni Borelli, De motu animalium (Rome, 1680-1681), “On the Motion of Animals.”
12. Nicolaus Steno, Observationes anatomicae (Leiden, 1662), “Anatomical Observations.”
13. William Harvey, The Anatomical Exercises of Dr. William Harvey (London, 1653).
14. René Descartes, De homine (Leiden, 1662), “On the Body.”
15. René Descartes, L’Homme (Paris, 1677), “On the Body.”
16. Christoph von Hellwig, Anatomicum vivum (Frankfurt, 1720), “Living Anatomy.”

Galileo and Health Care (Spring 2016)

Vignettes from Galileo’s world and the history of medicine illustrate a variety of health care resources and practitioners:
Life cycle care; women’s health; pre-natal care, birthing and midwifery; children’s diseases; sports medicine and exercise science; epidemiology, contagious disease and the black plague; preventive medicine; health and wellness; surgery and chemotherapy; data visualization; psychology; nutrition; pharmaceutical preparation; medical commerce and horticulture; government regulations and management; hygiene and health; dentistry; medical education and professional formation.
Which of these vignettes offer perspective on the spectrum of health care in Oklahoma today?

1. Hippocrates, Opera (Venice, 1588), “Works of Hippocrates,” ed. Girolamo Mercuriale.
2. Ibn Sina, Avicennae Arabum medicorum principis (Venice, 1608), “Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine.”
3. Hildegard of Bingen, Physica (Strassburg, 1533), “Physic, or Medical Remedies.”
4. Hortus sanitatis (Mainz, 1491), “Garden of Health.”
5. Paracelsus, Opera Bücher (Strassburg, 1603), “Collected Works.”
6. Georg Bartisch, Opthalmoduleia (Dresden, 1583), “Ophthalmology.”
7. Gregor Reisch, Margarita Filosofia (Vinegia, 1599), “The Pearl of Knowledge.”
8. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (1925), “100 Tales,” trans. John Payne, intro. Sir Walter Raleigh.
9. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford, 1628).
10. John Gerard, The Herball (London, 1636), 3d ed.
11. John Parkinson, Theater of Plantes (London, 1640).
12. Huszty von Rabynya, Kritischer Kommentar über die Östreichische Provinzialpharmakopee (Bratislava, 1785), “Critical Commentary on the Official Austrian Pharmacopoeia.”
13. Aristotle’s Masterpiece (Edinburgh, 1788).
14. John Hunter, The Natural History of Human Teeth (London, 1803).
15. Edward Jenner, The Cow Pox (London, 1798).
16. Florence Nightingale, Army Sanitary Administration and its Reform under the Late Lord Herbert (London, 1862).

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)
• David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx (Chicago, 2002)

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.

Book lists index

The Scientific Revolution

Location: Schusterman Library, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa.

What is nature? How is nature known?

When Galileo announced that “mathematics is the language of nature,” he was making a then-controversial claim about how nature is best known and understood. Mathematics encompassed rich traditions in art and perspective drawing, innovations in musical theory, as well as advances in engineering and mechanics. These discoveries depended upon a rich cultural context that drew science, art, literature and a spirit of creativity together in Renaissance Florence. The Galileo’s World exhibition invites us to participate in a similar Renaissance of discovery at the University of Oklahoma for our 125th anniversary.

Renaissance of Discovery

This exhibit samples a variety of works which represent the comprehensive scope of subject areas and modes of inquiry in the Scientific Revolution and at OU today. They illustrate the motto of Tycho Brahe: “Looking up, I look down.” By this phrase, Tycho referred to the interconnectedness of inquiries, as he himself sought to coordinate the study of astronomy with chemistry and medicine. In addition to those fields, the works sampled here show the connections of scientific inquiry with art, literature, law and political science, geology, biology, mathematics, meteorology, women and science, business and economics, and education.

1. Tycho Brahe and Elias Morsing, Diarium astrologicum (Uraniborg, 1586), “Astronomical Journal”
2. Giovanni Paolo Gallucci, Theatrum mundi (Venice, 1588), ”Theatre of the World”
3. Bernardino Baldi, Cronica de Matematici (ca. 1596), ms., ”Chronicle of Mathematics”
4. Giambattista della Porta, De furtivis literarum notis (Naples, 1563), “On Secret Writing”
5. Adriaan Metius, De genuino usu utriusque globi tractatus (Franeker, 1624), “Treatise on the Genuine Use of the Globes”
6. Fortunio Liceti, Litheosphorus, sive, De lapide Bononiensi lucem (Udine, 1640), “Phosphorescent Rock, or, On the Light of the Bolognese Stone”
7. Niels Steno, Canis carchariae dissectum caput, appendix to Elementorum myologiae specimen (Florence, 1667), “Dissection of the Head of a Shark”
8. Levinus Vincent, Wondertooneel der Nature (Amsterdam, 1706-1715), “Wonder Chambers of Nature”
9. Maria Sybilla Merian, Erucarum ortus (Amsterdam, 1717), “The Caterpillar Garden”
10. Leonardo da Vinci, Traite de la Peinture (Paris, 1716), 2d ed., “Treatise on Painting”
11. Euclid, The Elements of Euclid (London, 1847), ed. Oliver Byrne, “The Elements of Euclid”
12. John P. Finley, Tornadoes: What they are and how to observe them (New York, 1887)

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.