Daughters of Alchemy

Meredith K. Ray

ISBN 10: 0674504232 / ISBN 13: 9780674504233

Published by Harvard University Press, 2015

New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # WH-9780674504233

Synopsis:

The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men. Meredith Ray restores the work of these women to our understanding of early modern scientific culture. Her study begins with Caterina Sforza s alchemical recipes; examines the sixteenth-century vogue for books of secrets; and looks at narratives of science in works by Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella. It concludes with Camilla Erculiani s letters on natural philosophy and, finally, Margherita Sarrocchi s defense of Galileo s Medicean stars. Combining literary and cultural analysis, "Daughters of Alchemy" contributes to the emerging scholarship on the variegated nature of scientific practice in the early modern era. Drawing on a range of under-studied material including new analyses of the Sarrocchi Galileo correspondence and a previously unavailable manuscript of Sforza s "Experimenti," Ray s book rethinks early modern science, properly reintroducing the integral and essential work of women."

About the Author: Meredith K. Ray is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Delaware.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Daughters of Alchemy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication Date: 2015
Binding: HRD
Condition: New