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Resumo

Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy explores the intertwined histories of museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy. Paula Findlen examines how natural history collections, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, became sites of knowledge production, shaping the development of scientific disciplines and influencing broader cultural understandings of nature. The book analyzes the practices of collecting, organizing, and displaying natural objects, highlighting the role of collectors, naturalists, and institutions in creating and disseminating knowledge. Findlen argues that these collections were not simply repositories of specimens but dynamic spaces where scientific inquiry, social networks, and cultural values converged. She focuses on specific case studies, including the Medici collections in Florence, Ulisse Aldrovandi's museum in Bologna, and the botanical garden in Padua, to illustrate the diverse ways in which natural history was practiced and understood in early modern Italy. The book also explores the relationship between collecting and colonialism, showing how the influx of exotic specimens from the New World transformed European conceptions of nature and its place in the world.

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