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Books Of Secrets
Books of secrets were compilations of technical and medicinal recipes and magic formulae that began to be printed in the sixteenth century and were published continuously down to the eighteenth century. They constituted one of the most popular genres in early modern scientific publishing. The books of secrets contained hundreds of medical recipes, household hints, and technical recipes on metallurgy, alchemy, dyeing, making perfume, oil, incense, and cosmetics. The books of secrets supplied a great deal of practical information to an emerging new, middle-class readership, leading some historians to link them with the emerging secularistic values of the early modern period and to see them as contributing to the making of an ‘age of how-to.’ Some books of secrets, such as Alessio Piemontese's famous ''Secreti'' (1555), contained mainly practical and technological information in the form of useful recipes. Others, such as Giambattista Della Porta's ''Magia Naturalis'' (''Natura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alessio Piemontese
Alessio Piemontese, also known under his Latinized name of Alexius Pedemontanus, was the pseudonym of a 16th-century Italian physician, alchemist, and author of the immensely popular book, ''The Secrets of Alexis of Piedmont''. His book was published in more than a hundred editions and was still being reprinted in the 1790s. The work was translated into Latin, German, English, Spanish, French, and Polish. The work unleashed a torrent of 'books of secrets' that continued to be published down through the eighteenth century. Piemontese was the prototypical 'professor of secrets'. His description of his hunt for secrets in the preface to the ''Secreti'' helped to give rise to a legend of the wandering empiric who dedicated his life to the search for natural and technological secrets. The book contributed to the emergence of the concept of science as a hunt for the secrets of nature, which pervaded experimental science during the period of the Scientific Revolution. It is generally assu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giambattista Della Porta
Giambattista della Porta (; 1535 – 4 February 1615), also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta, was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution and Reformation. Giambattista della Porta spent the majority of his life on scientific endeavors. He benefited from an informal education of tutors and visits from renowned scholars. His most famous work, first published in 1558, is entitled ''Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic).'' In this book he covered a variety of the subjects he had investigated, including occult philosophy, astrology, alchemy, mathematics, meteorology, and natural philosophy. He was also referred to as "professor of secrets". Childhood Giambattista della Porta was born at Vico Equense, near Naples, to the nobleman Nardo Antonio della Porta. He was the third of four sons and the second to survive childhood, having an older brother Gian Vincenzo and a younger brother Gian Ferrante.Giambattist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magia Naturalis
' (in English, ''Natural Magic'') is a work of popular science by Giambattista della Porta first published in Naples in 1558. Its popularity ensured it was republished in five Latin editions within ten years, with translations into Italian (1560), French, (1565) Dutch (1566) and English (1658) printed. ''Natural Magic'' was revised and considerably expanded throughout the author's lifetime; its twenty books (Naples 1589) include observations upon geology, optics, medicines, poisons, cooking, metallurgy, magnetism, cosmetics, perfumes, gunpowder, and invisible writing. ''Natural Magic'' is an example of pre- Baconian science. Its sources include the ancient learning of Pliny the Elder and Theophrastus as well as numerous scientific observations made by Della Porta. Author Giambattista della Porta (also known as John Baptist Porta) was born in Vico Equense, Italy, between October 3rd and November 15th, 1535 and was the second of three sons. The Porta family belonged to the an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Magic
Natural magic in the context of Renaissance magic is that part of the occult which deals with natural forces directly, as opposed to ceremonial magic which deals with the summoning of spirits. Natural magic sometimes makes use of physical substances from the natural world such as stones or herbs. Natural magic so defined includes astrology, alchemy, and disciplines that we would today consider fields of natural science, such as astronomy and chemistry (which developed and diverged from astrology and alchemy, respectively, into the modern sciences they are today) or botany (from herbology). The Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher wrote that "there are as many types of natural magic as there are subjects of applied sciences". Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa discusses natural magic in his ''Three Books of Occult Philosophy'' (1533), where he calls it "nothing else but the highest power of natural sciences". The Italian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who founded the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isabella Cortese
Isabella Cortese ( fl. 1561), was an Italian alchemist and writer of the Renaissance. All that is known of her life and work is from her book on alchemy, ''The Secrets of Lady Isabella Cortese''. Cortese was also well-versed in several fields other than alchemy. She helped develop a variety of facial cosmetic products and made a variety of other contributions to science during the 16th century. 16th-century Italian science culture Throughout the 16th century, scientific culture flourished in many different areas of study, not only in academies and courts but also in a number of books. There was a new excitement for manipulating nature and acquiring secrets for a wide range of uses, including cosmetics, alchemical transformations and medical remedies. In early modern contexts, the word "secret" and "experiment" were synonymous. However, it didn't mean that it was unknown, rather, that the "secret" or the "experiment" had been proven to work. In the 16th century, a secret was a for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Books By Type
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
