Autonomous Nature: Problems of Prediction and Control from Ancient Times to the Scientific Revolution. Carolyn Merchant. London: Routledge, 2016. xiii + 196 pp. $39.95.
several of these letters have previously appeared, as a valid form of publication (the Athanasius Kircher Correspondence Project, by contrast, is cited). It’s wonderful to see Jesuit, Lincean, and Peireskian correspondences integrated systematically here with a standardized mode of transcription. The largest single contributor is Peiresc with seventy-seven letters; the most dramatic is Henry Wotton’s perceptive announcement of the launch of the Sidereus Nuncius. Most of the letters presented here have already been analyzed at the various moments of discovery over the course of the last century. What we are now able to do is start interpreting and contextualizing the corpus of primary documents in its entirety with the knowledge that it is as complete as such things may be.