University of Chicago Press Aesthetic Science – Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650–1720

The scientists affiliated with the early Royal Society of London have long been regarded as forerunners of modern empiricism, rejecting the symbolic and moral goals of Renaissance natural history in favor of plainly representing the world as it really was. In Aesthetic Science, Alexander Wragge-Morley challenges this interpretation by arguing that key figures such as John Ray, Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, Robert Hooke, and Thomas Willis saw the study of nature as an aesthetic project. To show how early modern naturalists conceived of the interplay between sensory experience and the production of knowledge, Aesthetic Science explores natural-historical and anatomical works of the Royal Society through the lens of the aesthetic. By underscoring the importance of subjective experience to the communication of knowledge about nature, Wragge-Morley offers a groundbreaking reconsideration of scientific representation in the early modern period and brings to light the hitherto overlooked role of aesthetic experience in the history of the empirical sciences. Review "In sum, this is a beautiful, concise study that will be of interest to historians of science, aesthetics, and communication. The central argument . . . is striking in its weaving of different sources and fields into a coherent vision." -- "Ambix""Alexander Wragge-Morley's enjoyable volume provides a compelling interpretation of how members of the Royal Society of London represented nature in their works through aesthetic thinking in the seventeenth century."-- "Renaissance Quarterly""An ambitious and provocative argument for the interrelation of empirical science and aesthetic taste. . . . Aesthetic Science advances a necessary intervention, compelling us to grapple with the inextricably theological, affective, and yet universalizing grounds of natural philosophy. Wragge-Morley's argument for the conjoined origins of empirical science and aesthetic taste advances a revelatory corrective to anybody who continues to take Kant at his word."-- "Eighteenth-Century Studies""Thought-provoking, useful, and ambitious... An engaging piece of scholarship, thanks to Wragge-Morley's fluid prose, many concrete examples, and careful selection of evidence... Aesthetic Science is going to become a staple for history of science postgraduates and specialists alike."-- "Journal of British Studies""With this engaging book, Alexander Wragge-Morley joins a body of new scholarship that draws attention to the nuanced history of the early Royal Society, addressing practices and discursive activities that have fallen outside of the scope of a more traditional history of institutions. Arguing against the classical reading of the early Royal Society as exemplifying a new dispassionate and objective study of nature in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Wragge-Morley instead demonstrates the importance of subjective and affective states in shaping the epistemological framework of the Society's activities. . . . [The] ambitious book covers a wide range of topics that have been broadly overlooked in the history of the early Royal Society, from the formative influence of physico-theology to the role of rhetoric and experiences of pleasure in the creation and transmission of knowledge. . . . Wragge-Morley successfully offers the reader a history that captures the clear interplay between theology, rhetoric, natural history and even briefly archaeology and architecture. As a contribution to the history of science, this work powerfully demonstrates the continuity of knowledge practices across disciplines whose boundaries have often remained too fixed, adding further nuance and interest to this active field of contemporary scholarship."-- "Nuncius""Wragge-Morley successfully melds a readable narrative of the Scientific Revolution in England with an original historical interpretation of the foundations and methods of empirical science underlying the work of it