The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment: Newtonian Science, Religion, and Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century [Hardcover]

Vincenzo Ferrone (Author), Sue Brotherton (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1995

Vincenzo Ferrone has undertaken the ambitious project of examining the diffusion of Newtonianism in Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and of delineating its fundamental significance for the culture of the Enlightenment. His innovative view totally changes the traditional interpretation of Italian history of the early eighteenth century, which viewed Italy as a peripheral reality, marginal to the theatre of intellectual confrontations that developed in the so-called crisis of the European mind and gave rise to the Enlightenment. Through a rich and massive archival search that uncovered important secret documents such as private letters between bishops of the Roman church, scientists and Protestant theologians, Ferrone unveils the existence of an original Italian debate about the ideological consequences of the spread of Newtonian theories. In Italy as in Western Europe, modernity started with reflections on the Newtonian Enlightenment, the new natural theology, materialism, freedom of thought, the epistemological basis of political economy, and republicanism. In Rome, the health of Gnosticism, distinguished clericals used Boyles Lecturer and the Anglican apology of Samuel Clarke to reform Catholicism. The ancient project of Galileo and the Academy of Lincei, aimed at founding a great alliance between modern violence and faith, was pursued by these enlightened Catholics through Newtonian natural theology. Ferrone's work presents a classical example of the new intellectual history, examining both the scientific ideas themselves and the cultural and social context in which they were broadcast.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

..". one of the most comprehensive surveys of the interrelations among politics, religion, and natural philosophy in the early eighteenth century.... As Ferrone amply demonstrates, Italy between the 1690s and 1740s developed a vibrant and complicated intellectual culture.... This is a story about the power of informal channels of communication and the attempt to refine the meaning of reason within the parameters of Catholic Europe." --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (March 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0391038486
• ISBN-13: 978-0391038486
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,617,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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