[this is a legacy page from the 2021 iteration of the Historiography Clinic]
The full proper and true bibliographic citation: Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley ; London: University of California Press, 1994).
Main field/subfields and interlocutors: History of collecting / History of Natural History
- Older museology: Murray (1904) v. Schlosser (1908)
- Newer Museology: Impey/MacGregor (1985) Pomian (1987)
- History of natural history: Ashworth /Cook /Shapiro (1990s)
- Experimental culture: Shapin / Dear
- Curiosity (Daston's early work, although published before Wonders (1998))
Periodization: Ca 1550 - 1650
Especially major people/places: Aldrovandi to Kircher; important also: Calzolari, Mercati, Ferrante Imperato
Mainly northern Italy (particularly Bologna, Milan, Florence), Rome, Naples; some excursions and comparisons with London/RS
Main sources/archives: Large number of mainly Latin and Italian language sources: Printed catalogues of collections, natural histories, naturalist correspondence
Main argument(s):
- Early modern (Italian) collections were sociable spaces and collecting was a sociable activity
- Museums were embedded into a patrician and courtly culture; this means also that the scientific culture that lay behind collecting activities and the museum space may not look like later scientific cultures (10) and has thus been dismissed
- The museum as “a microcosm of elite society as well as nature herself” (11)
Structure of book:
- Thematically rather than chronologically, although most chapters give a chronological narrative from late 16C to late 17C
- Three parts:
I) situating the “museum in time as well as space” (15): Findlen aims to describe what early modern museums looked like, what the activity of collecting nature looked like, and what social rituals embedded museums in the urbane, humanistic, elite culture II) further examines the rituals attached to the act of collecting, the mobility of collectors and objects, and the experimental and medical activities in the museum space III) shows how the collector as an identity was formed and how this identity related to the early modern courtly patronage system
Useful book reviews (include link / DOI if possible) and key points from these:
Steven Shapin, Review of Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, by Paula Findlen, The American Historical Review 101, no. 1 (1996): 203–4, https://doi.org/10.2307/2169309.
- Noting that “Compared to the heavy historical industries mobilized around Galileo, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, and even Robert Boyle, the study of early modern natural history has been on the scale of a corner shop.” (203) and Findlen's contribution in remedying this
- Shapin compares Findlen's extensive and multifaceted work to a Wunderkammer itself and sums up (in perhaps unintentionally flippant and understated Shapian fashion) that Findlen created “a book full of stuff to think about and to talk about.” (204)
Gigliola Fragnito, review of Review of Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, by Paula Findlen, Victoria E. Bonnell, and Lynn Hunt, The Journal of Modern History 68, no. 4 (1996): 1006–8. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2946749
- Fragnito is better at appreciating Findlen's achievement of working the vast and difficult sources, “the subtlety of her interpretation, her sharp methodology,” and her elegant writing (1007-8)
- Fragnito calls for a clearer appreciation of the differences between northern Italy and the south and also for a more critical understanding why the Aristotelian traditions continued among the naturalists (suggesting that the rhetoric might have been “the screen behind which to hide the daring od innovation”(1008)
Key points or interventions or sub-arguments by chapter:
Ch 1: - Museum catalogues from Aldrovandi to Kircher show the development “from simple list to scientific corpus to literary production” (37) Ch 2: - Attempts at a universal collection to encyclopaedic aims failed by the mid-17C when Kircher had become a divisive figure and the Italian Baroque collections were seen critically by members of the RS Ch 3: - The museum space became a controlled locus of sociable activity with clear rules for gentlemanly conduct; while the museum became rhetorically more public, it excluded women (143) Ch 4: - Museums were embedded in an EM scientific culture of collecting activities, travelling and excursions, as well as contributions of those outside the gentlemanly sphere Ch 5: - Once in the museum, objects were used to confirm (or deny) Aristotelian natural philosophy, and were used in experimental activities, and served as artifacts to further courtly patronage Ch 6: - The omnipresence of physicians and apothecaries among early modern collectors meant that many of the objects collected had medical uses, this changed by the late 17C “when classification rather than therapy became the principal issue of contention” (287) Ch 7: - The collector forged a scientific self which was based upon humanist ideals. Rhetorically this saw a merging of ancient and new learning Ch 8: - The museum was deeply embedded in the system of absolutist princely patronage (and became even more so). Jesuits
Epilogue: The more “professionally” defined naturalist (407) did not emerge until the mid-18C when institutional ties replaced ties to individual rulers