Wilson 1995

Wilson, Catherine. The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

1. Science and Protoscience

"Those who agree that there was an acceleration in the growth of knowledge after the turn of the century are divided on whether it is appropriate to speak of it as a scientific revolution or only as an increase in momentum and coordination. Was there a clean break with the past, o rather a return to the mathematizing of the medieval calculators and the direct observation of the ancients? Was the cultivation of personalities alienated from the literary-humanistic culture of the Renaissance a precondition of these changes or a consequence of them?" (3)