Jesuit science and the republic of letters / edited by Mordechai Feingold.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Jesuits / Mordechai Feingold -- The Academy of Mathematics of the Collegio Romano from 1553 to 1612 / Ugo Baldini -- Galileo's Jesuit connections and their influence on his science / William A. Wallace -- The partial transformation of medieval cosmology by Jesuits in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Edward Grant -- Descartes and the Jesuits / Roger Ariew -- Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the science of his time / Alfredo Dinis -- Scientific spectacle in baroque Rome / Paula Findlen -- Pious ambition / Martha Baldwin -- Tradition and scientific change in early modern Spain / Víctor Navarro -- Jesuit science in the Spanish Netherlands / G.H.W. Vanpaemel -- The Storia Letteraria D'Italia and the rehabilitation of Jesuit science / Brendan Dooley.

Local access dig.pdf. [Feingold-Jesuit science and the republic of letters.pdf]

OCLC note: Founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus was viewed for centuries as an impediment to the development of modern science. The Jesuit educational system was deemed conservative and antithetical to creative thought, while the Order and its members were blamed by Galileo, Descartes, and their disciples for virtually every proceeding against the new science. No wonder a consensus emerged that little reason existed for historians to take Jesuit science seriously.Only during the past two decades have scholars begun to question this received view of the Jesuit role in the Scientific Revolution, and this book contributes significantly to that reassessment. Focusing on the institutional setting of Jesuit science, the contributors take a new and broader look at the overall intellectual environment of the Collegio Romano and other Jesuit colleges to see how Jesuit scholars taught and worked, to examine the context of the Jesuit response to the new philosophies, and to chart the Jesuits' scientific contributions. Their conclusions indicate that Jesuit practitioners were indeed instrumental in elevating the status of mathematics and in stressing the importance of experimental science; yet, at the same time, the Jesuits were members of a religious order with a clearly defined apostolic mission. Understanding both the contributions of Jesuit practitioners and the constraints under which they worked helps us to gain a clearer and more complete perspective on the emergence of the scientific worldview

The New Science and Jesuit Science : Seventeenth Century Perspectives / edited by M. Feingold.

Includes bibliographical references.

Preface /  Mordechai Feingold --  Mathematics and Modesty in the Society of Jesus: The Problems of Christoph Grienberger /  Michel John Gorman --  The Grounds for Conflict: Grienberger, Grassi, Galileo, and Posterity /  Mordechai Feingold --  Additio illa non videtur edenda: Giuseppe Biancani, Reader of Galileo in an Unedited Censored Text /  Francesco Paolo De Ceglia --  Two Jesuit Responses to Galileo's Science of Motion: Honore Fabri and Pierre Le Cazre /  Carla Rita Palmerino --  Jesuit Mathematical Practice in Portugal, 1540-1759 /  Henrique Leitao --  The Celestial Pilgrimages of Valentin Stansel (1621-1705), Jesuit Astronomer and Missionary in Brazil /  Carlos Ziller Camenietzki.

"One cannot talk about mathematics in the 16th and 17th centuries without seeing a Jesuit at every corner," George Sarton observed in 1940. * Sarton, of course, was not the first to recognize the disproportionate representation of members of the Society of Jesus in the scientific enterprise of the early modern period. However, unlike many historians who belittled the discernible numerical strength of the Jesuits on the grounds that they lacked originality and were generally hostile to new ideas, Sarton correlated numerical strength with significance. Hence his plea for collecting the papers of that industrious historian of Jesuit science, Henri Bosmans, was quite refreshing. Yet Sarton's appeal went unheeded, and not only with respect to Bosmans' papers. The perception of the Jesuits as plodding pedagogues and obscurantists remained as ingrained as ever, virtually sanctioning the disregard of their activities. Such neglect meant that the exact nature of the Jesuit contribution to the Scientific Revolution remained sketchy at best; only recently - owing to a long-overdue examination of the Order's archives and of published texts - have new contours begun to emerge. Striking in this reassessment is a more nuanced appreciation of the Jesuits' interaction with "modernity" and a far greater recognition of the Jesuit contribution to the two poles of modern science: the mathematization of natural philosophy and experimental science."

DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0361-1

Local access dig.pdf. [Feingold-New Science and Jesuit Science.pdf]