Dissertation Research: The Natural Philosophy of Poison: 1300-1700

拟议中的科学与社会论文改进补助金在科学的历史和哲学将支持数据收集在选定的档案馆在美国，意大利和英国，以便了解关于毒药的作品的创作，传播和变化的性质，这在十四世纪迅速成为一个连贯的流派。它的核心问题是：为什么毒药的哲学治疗突然对医生和他们的赞助人很重要？为什么各种毒药的治疗方法清单显然变得不够？随着对毒药的定义和理解从药物列表到毒药性质的讨论再到毒药与身体之间的物理相互作用的讨论，毒药的定义和理解是如何变化的？这些问题，虽然他们可以回答通过调查的毒药文献，告诉我们更多的自然哲学和医学之间的接口，以及社会环境如何影响智力发展和知识的流通。该项目是一系列相关问题的试金石。它将首先描述中世纪的毒药文学，概述关于毒药的性质，定义和操作的哲学争论。它将探讨一个特定的工作在整个欧洲知识界的传播，以及提供一个新的途径调查政治影响医学的时候，政治中毒的威胁隐约可见。最后，它跨越了许多分期界限，如手稿和印刷，中世纪，文艺复兴和早期现代。

The proposed Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant in the history and philosophy of science will support data collection at select archives in the U.S., Italy, and Great Britain in order to understand the creation, propagation, and changing nature of the works on poison, which quickly became a coherent genre in its own right over the fourteenth century. Its central questions are: Why was a philosophical treatment of poison suddenly important to physicians and their patrons? Why did lists of remedies for various poisons apparently become inadequate? How did definitions and understandings of poison change as works on the topic moved from lists of remedies to discussions of the nature of poison to discussions of physical interactions between poison and the body? These questions, though they can be answered through an investigation of poison literature, tell us much more about the interface between natural philosophy and medicine and how social contexts influence intellectual development and circulation of knowledge. The project serves as a litmus test for a constellation of related issues. It will first describe medieval poison literature, outline the philosophical debates regarding the nature, definition and operation of poison. It will explore the diffusion of a particular work across the European intellectual community, as well as provide a new avenue of inquiry into political influence on medicine at a time when the threat of political poisoning loomed large. Lastly, it crosses over a number of periodization boundaries, such as manuscript and print, and medieval, Renaissance, and early modern.