This paper deals with the influence that geological research in Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had on the reconstruction of Earth's history. The identification of the true nature (i.e., organic) of fossils by Fabio Colonna in the early seventeenth century and, later in the century, the Stenonian sedimentary geology in agreement with the Genesis and the volcanological studies of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli gave the learned men of the Modern Age important tools in order to establish a numerical dating of Earth's age. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, two Italian people, Jacopo Grandi and Francesco Bianchini, and the French Charles De Brosses, tried to build a calendar of the past of the world on the basis of natural and historical records. Even if they used the data in a profoundly different way, they reached (in fact, they wanted to reach) the same results: the confirmation of the same calendar of Earth's history elaborated by the most famous Bible chronologists at the middle of the seventeenth century ( Lightfoot, 1642 ; Ussher, 1654 ). De Brosses rejected the Italian dating, following the steps of his friend Buffon. He enlarged the geological calendar but did not understand, just like the two Italians, that at that time any absolute dating of the age of our planet was impossible.

Abstract The Paper Museum comprises c. 10 000 drawings and prints, most of which are in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. When viewed in their seventeenth-century context, 25 of these drawings depict ‘geological’ material that also served as materia medica: earths, calculi, bezoars, toadstones, corals, calcifying alga, fungus stone, lodestone, eagle-stones, Bologna stone, amber, amulets, figured stones and gems. Some of these are listed in the official 1639 pharmacopoeia of Rome. Eleven of these drawings are reproduced here, nine of them for the first time. A single drawing may depict up to 25 specimens, many of which were in the collections of members of the Academy of the Lynxes (Lincei) or collectors known to them. The archives of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657) confirm the Lincei’s interest both in Paracelsian chemistry and in materia medica. Cassiano owned copies of two fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts listing more than 34 minerals with their therapeutic uses. The Lincei also published a sixteenth-century manuscript containing 26 ‘minerals suitable for medical use’: De materia medica Novae Hispaniae , by Francisco Hernández (1651), whose work in materia medica has been lauded as ‘the most original … in the entire Renaissance’.

ABSTRACT During the first half of the seventeenth century, the Danish polyhistor, Ole Worm (1588–1654), established a collection in Copenhagen, the Museum Wormianum, consisting of minerals, plants, animals, and man-made objects. The collection attracted visitors and was renowned throughout Europe; however, Worm also used it as a site for teaching his university students. Even though Worm did not contribute significantly to the history of science with new discoveries, this article argues that he played a role in shaping an intellectual environment founded on international exchange in which discussions took place, methods were enhanced, and talents were supported. In this context, his museum had an important function as a site of attraction and exchange, anticipating social interaction and learning, even when Worm himself could not participate.

Abstract Geopharmaceuticals have a recorded history of use by a wide range of cultures for over 3000 years. The history of geological simples is written in the leaves of a diversity of literary sources, an overview of which is attempted for the first time. Egyptian medical papyri, Assyrian and Babylonian clay tablets, Indian Puranas , plus ancient Chinese, classical Greek and Roman writings all preserve a folk tradition of therapeutic earths, rocks, minerals and fossils. Anglo-Saxon Laeceboc , medieval Islamic writings, and Western medieval bestiaries all contain scattered references to geological simples. A surge of appreciation for geopharmaceuticals took place with the onset of the Western medieval lapidary tradition, which influenced the writings of the early encyclopaedists and writers of herbals. With the advent of printing, many classical and newly translated Islamic texts were made more readily available, stimulating a burst of scholarship by early modern scientists of the Renaissance. Increasingly detailed illustrations were used to embellish the catalogues of Renaissance Wunderkammern . By the late eighteenth century, the use of geological materials was declining, and being replaced by a more empirical approach to pharmacology.

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.

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).