Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden AgeA new and unexpected history of the Dutch pursuit of commerce in the 16th and 17th centuries and how it triggered the Scientific Revolution In this wide-ranging and stimulating book, a leading authority on the history of medicine and science presents convincing evidence that Dutch commerce—not religion—inspired the rise of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harold J. Cook scrutinizes a wealth of historical documents relating to the study of medicine and natural history in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, Brazil, South Africa, and Asia during this era, and his conclusions are fresh and exciting. He uncovers direct links between the rise of trade and commerce in the Dutch Empire and the flourishing of scientific investigation. Cook argues that engaging in commerce changed the thinking of Dutch citizens, leading to a new emphasis on such values as objectivity, accumulation, and description. The preference for accurate information that accompanied the rise of commerce also laid the groundwork for the rise of science globally, wherever the Dutch engaged in trade. Medicine and natural history were fundamental aspects of this new science, as reflected in the development of gardens for both pleasure and botanical study, anatomical theaters, curiosity cabinets, and richly illustrated books about nature. Sweeping in scope and original in its insights, this book revises previous understandings of the history of science and ideas. |
From inside the book
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... practices. In the conclusion, I ventured some comments of a comparative kind in order to point to the changes that were the same throughout Europe as well as England and vowed to myself to explore them further. Although I had access to ...
... practice and knowledge, even anatomical investigations, with special reference to Amsterdam, follows. A subsequent chapter on some important studies of medicine and natural history in the Dutch East and West Indies, centered on the work ...
... practice, the scientists definitively recognized the priority of Experience. The change of attitude caused by the voyages of discovery is a landmark affecting not only geography and cartography, but the whole of 'natural history.' It ...
... practice he probably picked up when he was a young man in the early 1580s from one of his older humanist colleagues, Reinerus Soleander (Sondermann).63 From the nearby low countries, Pieter van Foreest (Forestus) became widely known ...
... practice. Such arrangements were not merely utilitarian: they were spurred on by great and growing public excitement about new anatomical studies. Far and away the most famous of them was that of Andreas Vesalius, son of a Brussels ...
Contents
1 | |
42 | |
82 | |
Four Commerce and Medicine in Amsterdam | 133 |
Five Truths and Untruths from the Indies | 175 |
Descartes in the Republic | 226 |
Seven Industry and Analysis | 267 |
Eight Gardens of the Indies Transported | 304 |
The Medicine of East Asia | 339 |
Sticking to Simple Things | 378 |
Eleven Conclusions and Comparisons | 410 |
Notes | 417 |
Bibliography | 473 |
Index | 537 |
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Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age Harold John Cook No preview available - 2007 |