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Images in Early Modern Natural History

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Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

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Synonyms

Epistemic images; Scientific images/pictures/illustrations; Technical images

Introduction

In 1542 botanist Leonhart Fuchs claimed “Who in his right mind would condemn pictures which can communicate information much more clearly than the words of even the most eloquent men?” (apud Smith 2004: 150). Despite this apparent unproblematic endorsement of images, early modern naturalists’ relationship with images was not always smooth. Likewise, for a long time, historians of science have disregarded or were reluctant to integrate images into their narrative, an aspect which has lately changed greatly.

During the past decades, historians of science and historians of art engaged in the study of this type of production have put forward different terminologies and different limitations to what they understand to be scientific images, “images that relate in some way or another to the acquisition, production, and presentation of knowledge” (Marr 2016: 1001). This text leaves aside whole...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History and Theory of Art, National University of Arts, Bucharest, Romania

    Ioana Măgureanu

Authors
  1. Ioana Măgureanu
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Correspondence to Ioana Măgureanu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Dana Jalobeanu

  2. Dept. of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University Dept. Philosophy & Moral Sci, Ghent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

    Charles T. Wolfe

Section Editor information

  1. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Dana Jalobeanu

  2. Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Sarton Centre for History of Science, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Charles T. Wolfe

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Măgureanu, I. (2020). Images in Early Modern Natural History. In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_568-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_568-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9

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