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Podcast: New Books in Art
Episode: Alexander Wragge-Morley, "Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650-1720" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
Description: The scientists affiliated with the early Royal Society of London have long been regarded as forerunners of modern empiricism, rejecting the symbolic and moral goals of Renaissance natural history in favor of plainly representing the world as it really was. In Aesthetic Science, Alexander Wragge-Morley challenges this interpretation by arguing that key figures such as John Ray, Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, Robert Hooke, and Thomas Willis saw the study of nature as an aesthetic project.To show how early modern naturalists conceived of the interplay between sensory experience and the production of knowledge, Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in...