...This chapter reassesses the relationship between physico-theology—the main body of works in which philosophers such as Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, and John Ray advanced claims about how nature should be experienced—and their empirical approach to the study of nature. For the most part, physico...

...This chapter examines the challenge of collective note-taking in the service of collaborative projects, such as those of John Ray and Martin Lister on the description and classification of plants and animals. It considers the influence of Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum as a model...

... of the objects for which they stood, simply representing the world as it appeared to the senses. This chapter shows, by contrast, that naturalists such as John Ray saw their written style as a form of "verbal picturing" or enargeia, capable of provoking the same bodily and affective pleasures long associated...

... this interpretation, showing 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. Seeking to obtain knowledge of the natural world through their senses, they practiced a science that depended on harnessing the embodied...