The Invention of Discovery, 1500û1700

Getting knowledge out of data seems to involve some kind of discovery: finding, not making. But how do we know that? Was the idea of discovery itself found, or made? This volume investigates the possibility that it may have been made-and that the Renaissance period in Western Europe both preceded, and produced, that development. From Browne to Galileo, from stagecraft to math, from art to the aesthetic, contributors to this collection examine aspects of the period's culture under the dialectic of finding and making. They thereby place the Renaissance at the historical juncture of epistemology (or theory of knowledge) and hermeneutics (or theory of interpretation). The Invention of Discovery, 15001700 illuminates the profound, and ongoing, effects that Renaissance knowledge practices may have had on the patterns of human understanding.