William Eamon
Regents Professor of History
Dean, Honors College

History of Science and Medicine
Early Modern Europe and Spain
Renaissance Italy

Department of History
New Mexico State University
Box 30001 MSC 3HON
Las Cruces, NM 88003

Office Hours, Fall 2004: T Th 2-3 p.m.
(Conroy Honors Center, Rm 103)

Telephone: 575-646-2005
weamon@nmsu.edu




Education:
University of Kansas, Ph.D., 1977 (History of Science)
University of Montana, M.A., 1970 (History)
University of Montana, B.A., 1968 (History)

Research Topics/Interests:

Medieval and Early Modern Science
Science and Culture in Early Modern Italy and Spain
The Scientific Revolution
Science and Popular Culture
Magic and Occult Traditions in Renaissance Europe

Courses Offered
Honors 224G:  God and Nature
History 301G: Origins of Modern Science
History 302G: Science in Modern Society

History 304:  Medicine and Society
History 433: Renaissance and Reformation
History 440: The Scientific Revolution




The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Magic, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy
(forthcoming, Random House/National Geographic Books, June 2010)









Leonardo Fioravanti




Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)


Science and the Secrets of Nature
click for details

Italian Translation of
Science and the Secrets of Nature



                                                                                             

Más allá de la Leyenda Negra: España y la Revolutión Científica
Beyond the Black Legend: Spain and the Scientific Revolution

Edited by Victor Navarro Brotons and William Eamon


Istituto de Historia de la Ciencia y Documentación López Piñero

Universidad de Valencia – C.S.I.C

Valencia 2007


Proceedings of the Conference on Spain and the Scientific Revolution held in Valencia, September 2005



(Copies available upon request)













Selected Publications

        Books

Science and the Secrets of Nature:  Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1994); paperback edition, 1996.  Nominated for Pulitzer Prize; winner of the History Book Award, Association of American Publishers.  Italian translation:  La Scienza e i segreti della natura: I 'libri di segreti' nella cultura medievale e moderna, trans. by Renzo Repetti (Genova: ECIG, 1999)

Co-Editor (with Victor Navarro Brotons), Beyond the Black Legend: Spain and the Scientific Revolution / Más alla de la Leyenda Negra:  España y la Revolución Científica (Valencia: Soler, 2007)

The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy (Random House/National Geographic Books, forthcoming in 2010).

        Selected Articles and Book Chapters
 
   

  “On the Skins of Goats and Sheep: (Un)masking the Secrets of Nature in Early Modern Popular Culture,” in Visual Rhetorics of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe, ed. Tim McCall, Sean Roberts, and Giancarlo Fiorenza.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming, 2010)

    “Masters of Fire:  Italian Alchemists in the Court of Philip II,” in Chymia: Science and Nature in Early Modern Europe (1450-1750), ed. Miguel López Pérez and Mar Rey-Bueno (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, forthcoming, 2010)

                      “ ‘Nuestros males no son constitucionales, sino circunstanciales’: The Black Legend and the History of Early Modern Spanish Science,” Colorado Review of Hispanic Studies 7 (2009): forthcoming              

“How to Read a Book of Secrets,” in Secrets and Knowledge, ed. Alisha Rankin and Elaine Leong (London: Palgrave, forthcoming in 2011)

“The Canker Friar: Piety and Intrigue in an Era of New Diseases,” in Piety and Plague in Europe: From Byzantium to the Baroque, ed. Franco Mormando and Thomas W. Worcester, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies (Kirksville, MO: Truman Statue University Press, 2007), 156-76

“Spain and the Scientific Revolution: Historiographical Questions and Conjectures” (with Victor Navarro Brotòns), in Beyond the Black Legend:  Spain and the Scientific Revolution, ed. Victor Navarro Brotòns and William Eamon (Valencia: Soler, 2007), pp. 21-32   

“Appearance, Artifice, and Reality: Collecting Secrets in Courtly Culture,” in
The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the Inquirer: Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa and the Art of Collecting in Early Modern Spain
, ed. Mar Rey-Bueno and Miguel López-Pérez (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 127-43.

 “Markets, Piazzas, and Villages,” in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 3, ed. K. Park and L. Daston (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 206-23

 “The Secrets of Nature and the Moral Economy of Early Modern Science,” in Il Segreto / The Secret, ed. A. Paravacini Bagliani, Micrologus, vol. XIV (Florence: SISMEL, 2006), pp. 215-35

            “The Charlatan’s Trial:  An Italian Surgeon in the Court of King Philip II, 1576-1577,” Cronos 8 (2005), 1-30

“Pharmaceutical Self-Fashioning, or How to Get Rich and Famous in the Renaissance Medical Fashion Industry,” Pharmacy in History, 45 (2003), 123-29

“The Scientific Renaissance,” in A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance, ed. Guido Ruggiero (London: Blackwells Publishing 2002), pp. 403-24

"Alchemy in Popular Culture: Leonardo Fioravanti and the Search for the Philosopher's Stone," Early Science and Medicine, 5 (2000), 196-213

           "Cannibalism and Contagion:  Framing Syphilis in Counter-Reformation Italy," Early Science and Medicine, 3 (1998), 1-31

"El 'Nou Asclepi': Leonardo Fioravanti i les modes mèdiques al Renaixement," Afers. Fulls de recerca i pensament, 31 (Valencia, 1998), 679-93

"Natural Magic and Utopia in the Cinquecento:  Campanella, the Della Porta Circle, and the Revolt of Calabria," Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 26 (1995), 369-402

"Science as a Hunt," Physis, 31 (1994), 393-432

"'With the Rules of Life and and Enema':  Leonardo Fioravanti's Medical Primitivism," in Renaissance and Revolution:  Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen, and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe, ed. J.V. Field and F.A.J.L. James (London:  Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 29-44

"Court, Academy, and Printing House:  Patronage and Scientific Careers in Late-Renaissance Italy," in Patronage and Institutions, ed. B. Moran (Woodbridge:  Boydell Press, 1991), pp. 25-50

"From the Secrets of Nature to Public Knowledge," in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. D. C. Lindberg and R. S. Westman (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 333-66

"Plebs amat empirica:  Nicholas of Poland and His Critique of the Medieval Medical Establishment," (with Gundolf Keil), Sudhoffs Archiv 71 (1987), 180-96

"Inventing the World:  Einstein and the Generation of 1905," Antioch Review 43 (Summer, 1985), 340-51

"Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Science," Sudhoffs Archiv 69 (1985), 26-49

"Science and Popular Culture in Early Modern Italy:  The 'Professors of Secrets' and Their Books," The Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985), 471-85

"Arcana Disclosed:  The Advent of Printing, the Books of Secrets Tradition, and the Development of Experimental Science in the Sixteenth Century," History of Science 22 (1984), 111-50

 "The Accademia Segreta of Girolamo Ruscelli:  A Sixteenth Century Italian Scientific Society," (with Françoise Paheau), Isis 75 (1984), 327-42

"Technology as Magic in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance," Janus 70 (1983), 171-212

    Encyclopedia and Catalogue Entries
“Nicholas of Poland”; “Leonardo Fioravanti,” in Dictionary of Medical Biography, ed. W. Bynum and H. Bynum (New York: Greenwood Press, 2006).

 “Libros de secretos” / “Books of Secrets,” in Alquimia. Ciencia y pensamiento a través de los libros (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2005), 112-15

“Books of Secrets,” in Europe 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, ed. J. DeWald (New York:  Scribner’s, 2004), 5:365-6

 “Natural Magic,” in Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science, ed. J. Heilbron (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 479-81

"Magic and the Occult," in The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition:  An Encyclopedia, ed. G. B. Ferngren, E. J. Larson, and D. W. Amundsen (New York:  Garland Publishing Co., 2000), pp. 533-40

"Secrets of Nature"; "Books of Secrets"; "Giambattista Della Porta"; "Vannoccio Biringuccio," in The Scientific Revolution:  An Encyclopedia, ed. Wilbur Applebaum (New York:  Garland Publishing Co., 2000)

“Treatises on Technology,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. J. R. Strayer, vol. 10 (New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), 640 50    

    Current Research Projects
Science and Everyday Life in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1750 (book manuscript in progress; click for details)
    Recent Master's Theses
Joe Denk, "'Everyone Sees What You Appear to Be, Few Feel What You Are': Machiavellianism through the Perspective of Morality and Religion, 1550-1999" (1999)

Sheila Klopfer, "One of His Sheep: The Lives of Anabaptist Women from the Martyrs Mirror, 1525-1565" (1994)



Links to Resources in the History of Renaissance Science and Medicine:

Renaissance Society of America
History of Science Society
Galileo Project web page
Giambattista Della Porta web page
Virtual Library of the History of Science,Technology & Medicine
Jesuits and the Sciences, 1540-1995
Exhibitions in the History of Medicine
The Alchemy Virtual Library

 
 
 

 

...and when I'm not being a professor...
 

...here are some links to things 
I enjoy...

My grandson 'Miguelito'

United States Masters Swimming
USA Triathlon
Southwest Triathlon Club

 


...at the L.A. triathlon

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