Abstract The Pliocene fossiliferous succession of the Volterra hill, a prominent place in Tuscany, Italy and, since the Renaissance, the site of important archaeological finds of the ancient Etruscan civilization, has formed the object of enquiry over six centuries of research on the inner nature of the Earth system. The works of Restoro d'Arezzo, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolaus Steno, Giovanni Targioni, Nicolas Desmarest, Giambattista Brocchi, Alexandre Brongniart and Charles Lyell testify to the early recognition through fieldwork that those strata with seashells had formed at the bottom of the sea. This interpretation served different approaches to knowledge. Restoro, Leonardo and Steno, spanning nearly four centuries in the history of science (1282–1669), including the ‘Copernican Revolution’ and the start of the Modern Age, relied also on textual sources and trusted a speculative model of the Earth's interior, so that at Volterra they focused on vertical movements of the earth–water system. The authors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries abandoned pre-built young-Earth models and emphasized the geography of ancient Tuscany. Brocchi, Brongniart and Lyell promoted the taxonomic use of seashells to correlate rocks across Europe. This place deserves higher standards of valorization to promote understanding of the history and sociology of ideas.

Abstract The 17th and 18th centuries were periods when all the sciences began to develop and men of science showed an interest in what began later to grow into significant ways of looking at the Earth, the composition of its crust and the life forms inhabiting it. The political, social, economic and religious events of those times acted as helping influences on the way that all knowledge grew and developed, but also provided some limitations on the ways that scientific knowledge was pursued. The 18th century became widely known as ‘the Age of Enlightenment’, as it marked the ending of ignorance and darkness, but there were developments in 17th century European culture and knowledge that foreshadowed this. This paper concentrates on the work of two men of 17th century science who assisted the rise of interest in those evidences of the past life on our planet that would later become the sciences of Palaeontology and Palaeobotany. Robert Plot and Edward Lhwyd were the first custodians of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and their work demonstrates that such institutions did much to advance our scientific knowledge. Although three of their contemporaries, Robert Hooke, Nicolaus Steno and John Woodward, firmly believed that fossils were of organic origin, both Plot and Lhwyd opposed these views and developed their own explanations, yet, nevertheless, produced some accurate descriptions of fossils from both animal and plant sources. Lhwyd, in particular, was very hardworking and successful in his early attempts at classification. Later in the 18th century, Richard Brookes, MD used much of their work in a highly successful compilation of current knowledge, a six-volume work on Natural History. In this he was assisted by one of the literary geniuses of his time, Oliver Goldsmith. This was an important advance in the popularization of Natural Science

Examining the works of Athanasius Kircher and Nicolaus Steno allows similarities and differences to be drawn between their theories of Earth. This is aided by paying particular attention to the role of the French atomist Pierre Gassendi. With his friend Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Gassendi had a significant impact on Kircher's career and his thinking, and his work was read and noted by Steno in his student years in Copenhagen. Later, in the 1667 treatise Canis , Steno also appraised Gassendi's ideas on the origin of stones. Kircher's experiences of volcanism and earthquakes, gained during his expedition into southern Italy in 1637–1638, led him to formulate his theory of Earth in the early 1640s, when his Magnes was to be published. Completion of his theorizing about Earth was delayed, however, until publication of Mundus subterraneus (1665), in which he developed his concept of the “geocosm.” Steno probably met Kircher in 1666, and they are known to have corresponded on theological topics. In his Prodromus (1669), Steno criticized Kircher's idea of the “organic” growth of mountains. Steno adopted Descartes' idea of “collapse tectonics” and the formation of strata. Kircher's influence on Steno should not be neglected, however, given Steno's substantial excerpts from Kircher's Magnes in his manuscript. In fact, although Steno rejected the idea of a plastic force in his Prodromus , he may well have used Kircher's idea on magnetism to explain the growth of mineral crystals. Thus, given the usual wide acceptance of Cartesian influence on Steno, the historiography of geosciences may be appropriately and usefully revised by considering the role of the works of such figures as Gassendi and Kircher.

Abstract Geomorphology, the study of landforms and the processes that shape them, emerged in its modern form in the mid-twentieth century and continues to change. Its practice, however, derives from the convergence of discrete foundations in the Earth, water and applied sciences over the past 400 years, underpinned by advances in analysis and technology. The Earth-science foundation was built as early geologists sought to explain landforms as expressions of underlying rocks or as surrogates for vanished stratigraphies. This approach, more speculative than definitive, rarely explained the processes at work. The water and applied sciences were more discerning but only slowly came to be integrated into morphodynamic explanations. All three foundations, initially vague on time and space, emerged during the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century and were refined during the agrarian and industrial revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before converging into modern practice during the electronic age of the twentieth century.

Under the pressure of industrial demands following the discovery of South African diamonds, gemology became a science during the late nineteenth century by combining morphological mineralogy with mineral physics and chemistry. However, it underwent an empirical, pre- to semiscientific period during the Renaissance, when market novelties required development in gemological knowledge. Pliny's Naturalis Historia (1469) was the reference treatise on gemstones among scholars, but it was the Italian translation of this work by Landino in 1476 that made gem studies grow. Indeed, while scholarly mineralogy developed through Latin texts, practical arts related to minerals developed through light handbooks in the new European languages. In Italy, the most active trading center at that time, where luxury goods were brought to be set in gold and distributed to all of Europe, most gem traders possibly understood some Latin, but certainly their providers did not, nor their customers. This is why the first original Renaissance book on gems, Speculum lapidum , by Leonardi (1502) , did not enjoy popularity until it was translated into Italian by Dolce in 1565. Similarly, Barbosa's accounts of travel to gem-producing India (1516) became known only after Ramusio translated them in 1554. Among gemological contributions in Italian, the most farsighted ones are Mattioli's translation of Dioscorides' De materia medica (1544) and Cellini's Dell'oreficeria (1568) . Moreover, three manuscripts did not reach the stage of being printed: Vasolo's Le miracolose virtù delle pietre pretiose (1577) , Costanti's Questo è ‘l libro lapidario (1587) , and del Riccio's Istoria delle pietre (1597) . They survived, however, to help clarify gem interests and activities by the merchant class in the transitional time from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Then, Italy lost its top position in culture and trade, and a Fleming, A.B. de Boot, wrote the treatise that summed up the available knowledge on gems at that time (1609).

Mattia Damiani da Volterra (1705–1776), “renowned Doctor,” was the author in 1754 of a collection of scientific poems, Le Muse Fisiche ( The Physical Muses ) on two subjects: Newtonian physics and the plurality of the worlds. Damiani's interest in science was precocious, but even at that, it was superimposed on his studies in jurisprudence completed in Pisa in 1726. In 2003, Damiani's lost text, De Hygrometris et eorum defectibus disputatio ( Disputation about hygrometers and their defects ), which was printed in 1726 in Pisa, was brought to light. It characterizes him as a young scientist who refiected upon the properties and limits of laboratory instruments and on nascent aspects of climatology. In this Disputation , a delightful amalgamation of scientific and humanistic literature is pursued. A discussion of the properties and limits of contemporary hygrometers and a comparison of the Cartesian and Newtonian hypotheses about cloud formations are interspersed with quotations of verses on natural phenomena, mostly from poems of the classic age—a prelude to the author's future involvement in writing scientific verses. The poetry of Damiani, which often shows a musicality comparable to that of the poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), deserves to be recognized and saved from oblivion. Especially remarkable is the implicit “multimedia” project of a union among science, poetry, theater, and music. The rediscovered Disputation about hygrometers opens a new window on the personages involved and on the evolution of meteorological concepts in Europe in the context of the then-new Galilean and Newtonian physics.

Abstract: Italian physicians have been interested in geology since the fifteenth century or earlier, with leading figures carrying out fundamental and enlightening studies in both fields of competence. Refined cultured men including Bernardino Ramazzini, Antonio Vallisneri, Tommaso Antonio Catullo, Carlo Gemmellaro, Leopoldo Pilla, Giuseppe Meneghini, Gaetano Giorgio Gemmellaro and Arcangelo Scacchi, in addition to the introduction of reasoning and basic concepts for the advancement of Earth sciences, conducted major studies in the medical field, proving once again the holistic interests of Italian intellectuals. Following the publication of Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell, some scientists were fascinated by the geosciences, carrying out both medical observations and geological studies, and contributing significantly to the development of modern geology. The biographies and works of some leading Italian physicians illustrate their scientific activity in the study of stratigraphy, geomorphology, palaeontology and volcanology, with acknowledgement internationally. These Italian scientists contributed to the political unification of Italy, actively participating in scientific and political discussion, and fulfilling government aims. They contributed to the foundation of the Geological Society of Italy, one of the oldest scientific fellowships in Italy.

The Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605)—often reductively considered as a mere encyclopedist and avid collector of natural history curiosities—lived an adventurous youth and a long maturity rich of manuscripts, books, and outstanding achievements. He assembled the largest collections of animals, plants, minerals, and fossil remains of his time, which in 1547 became the basis of the first natural history museum open to the public. Shortly after that, he established the first public scientific library. He also proposed a complete single classification scheme for minerals and for living and fossil organisms, and he defined the modern meaning of the word “geology” in 1603. Aldrovandi tried to bridge the gap between simple collection and modern scientific taxonomy by theorizing a “new science” based on observation, collection, description, careful reproduction, and ordered classification of all natural objects. In an effort to gain an integrated knowledge of all processes occurring on Earth and to derive tangible benefits for humankind, he was a strenuous supporter of team effort, collaboration, and international networking. He anticipated and influenced Galileo Galilei's experimental method and Francis Bacon's utilitarianism, providing also the first attempt to establish the binomial nomenclature for both living and fossil species and introducing the concept of a standard reference or type for each species. His books and manuscripts are outstanding contributions to the classification of geological objects, and to the understanding of natural processes such as lithification and fossilization, thereby also influencing Steno's stratigraphic principles. The importance given to careful observation induced Aldrovandi to implement a uniformitarian approach in geology for both the classification of objects and the interpretation of processes. Aldrovandi influenced a school in natural history that reached its climax with the Istituto delle Scienze of Bologna in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with scientists such as Cospi, Marsili, Scheuchzer, Vallisneri, Beccari, and Monti in geology, and Malpighi, Cassini, Guglielmini, Montanari, Algarotti in other fields.