THE STUDY OF FOSSILS IN LEIBNIZ'S PROTOGAEA: TOWARDS A RECONCTRUCTION OF THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGICAL MODELS IN EARLY MODERN PALEONTOLOGY
Affiliation:
1. University of RomaTre, Department of Humanistic Studies, Via Ostiense 234, 00146 Roma and Museo Galileo-Institute and Museum of the History of Science Piazza dei Giudici 1, 50122 Firence domlar@libero.it
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The article is a detailed examination of practices originating in technology and art that were used as heuristically fertile models in Leibniz's Protogaea (1749) to explain the processes of fossilization and demonstrate the animal origin of fossils. Particular importance is given to engravings on copper, which, besides being the technique used to execute the plates in the Protogaea, also became an analogical model for the interpretation of fish fossils. These aspects of the Protogaea are contextualised within the broader framework of the interaction between artisanal and theoretical modes of knowledge in the Scientific Revolution and the still little-known historical development of this interaction in the field of paleontology.
Publisher
History of the Earth Sciences Society
Subject
General Earth and Planetary Sciences,History and Philosophy of Science