Description

Harper & Row, Published 1970. Paperback, xii, 194 pp.; 21 cm; First Edition. In Very Good condition. Blue and cream illustrated paper covers, cover design by Roger Zimmerman, with light bumping and creasing to edges and corners, and mild shelf and edge wear with toning to edges. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. English translation of I filosofi e le macchine (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962), the Italian historian of science Paolo Rossi's study of how the mechanical arts were rehabilitated between 1400 and 1700. Rossi follows the shift by which the methods of technicians and artisans, long dismissed as base, came to be recognized as a route to real knowledge of nature, tracing the argument from the workshops of fifteenth-century artists through the engineering treatises of the sixteenth century and into philosophy itself. Rossi is best known for Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, and this remains a standard reference on the artisan contribution to the scientific revolution. Edited by Benjamin Nelson, advisory editor in the humanities and social sciences for Harper Torchbooks, and issued as Harper Torchbooks TB 1458 at a cover price of $2.95. Contents: Preface; Mechanical Arts and Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century; The Idea of Scientific Progress; Philosophy, Technics, and the History of the Arts in the Seventeenth Century; Appendixes: The Nature-Art Relationship and the Machine of the World; Truth and Utility in the Science of Francis Bacon; The New Science and the Symbol of Prometheus; Index.