Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750

Wonders and the Order of Nature is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, petrifying springs, celestial apparitions — these were the marvels that adorned romances, puzzled philosophers, lured collectors, and frightened the devout.

Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explore and explain how wonder and wonders fortified princely power, rewove the texture of scientific experience, and shaped the sensibility of intellectuals. This is a history of the passions of inquiry, of how wonder sometimes inflamed, sometimes dampened curiosity about nature’s best-kept secrets. Refracted through the prism of wonders, the order of nature splinters into a spectrum of orders, a tour of possible worlds.

Author: Lorraine Daston, Katharine Park
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Zone Books
Published: 10/10/2001
Series: Zone Books
Pages: 512
Weight: 2.8lbs
Size: 11.00h x 7.30w x 1.70d
ISBN: 9780942299915
Language: English