- Science and Nature in the Renaissance

Catalog description

A study of the culture of Renaissance ideas as they pertained to the natural world.  Building on historian Brian Ogilvie's argument that natural history was invented in the Renaissance, this course looks at the Renaissance perceptions of the natural world from three perspectives: (1) how scientists and philosophers thought about astronomy, astrology, and humans' relationships with the universe; (2) how explorers, natural philosophers, and theorists cataloged and categorized their wonderous discoveries; (3) how Renaissance notions of the cosmos transformed perceptions scientists, artists and doctors had about the human body.