Science and the Secrets of Nature:  Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (1994)
William Eamon

Department of History
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM 88003

 
Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1994), offers a new interpretation of the origins of experimental science.  I argue that the 'new science' of the seventeenth century has its roots, in part, in the practical activities of artisans, alchemists, and common healers.  Through a detailed analysis of the 'books of secrets' tradition from antiquity until the end of the seventeenth century, I suggest that the advent of printing was a critical moment in the development of science.  By publishing the 'secrets' of craftsmen and experimenters, early modern printers created a body of empirical knowledge that became the basis for the 'Baconian sciences' of the seventeenth centuries.

The book also offers a new interpretation of the role of popular culture in the origins of science.  I give an account of the rise upon the scene of a new community of experimenters whom contemporaries called the ‘professors of secrets'.  In contrast to the traditional scientific community, the university professors, this group included alchemists, natural magicians, pharmacists, distillers, glassmakers, lens grinders, friars, and empirical doctors.  They conceived of science not as the explanation of things known, but as a great hunt after unknown secrets of nature.  The metaphor of the 'secrets of nature' takes on a new meaning under this interpretation, signifying a fundamental shift in the ethos governing natural philosophy. 
Table of Contents

Introduction
Printing, Popular Culture, and the Scientific Revolution

Chapter 1
The Literature of Secrets in the Middle Ages

Chapter 2
Knowledge and Power

Chapter 3
Arcana Disclosed

Chapter 4
The 'Professors of Secrets' and Their Books

Chapter 5
Leonardo Fioravanti, Vendor of Secrets

Chapter 6
Natural Magic and the Secrets of Nature

Chapter 7
The Secrets of Nature in Popular Culture

Chapter 8
Science as a Venatio

Chapter 9
The Virtuosi and the Secrets of Nature

Chapter 10
From the Secrets of Nature to Public Knowledge

Conclusion
Secrets of Alexis of Piedmont

To make the face fayre.

Take the flowres of Rosemary, and boyle them in white wine, than washe youre face with it, and use of it for to drinke and so shall you make youre face verie faire, and also your breath sweete.

A singular ointment, which healeth all burnynes with fire, 
not leavyng any cicatrice or skarre where it hath been.

Take the white of two Egges, two ounces of Tutia Alexandrina, two ounces of quick Lime washed in ix waters, an ounce of new waxe, with as moche oyle Rosatte, as shall suffice, and make thereof an ointmente, whiche ye shal finde verie good, for this that we have spoken of.

To know whether a woman shall conceive or not.

Take of the ruen of a Hare, and having frayed and consumed it, in hote water, give it tthe woman to drinke, in the mornyng at her breakfast, than let her stande in a hote bathe: and if there come a greefe or payne in her bellie, she may conceive: if not, she shall never conceyve.
 

Alessio Piemontese, The Secretes (London, 1558)
translated by William Warde

Alessio Piemontese's Secreti (1555),
the most popular 'book of secrets' 
of the sixteenth century

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