The Renaissance Academies between Science and the Humanities

Abstract

The scientific academies of early modern Europe have long been recognized for their critical role in incubating and legitimating the Scientific Revolution. So also, academies dedicated to vernacular literature and language, opera and ballet, art and design, and speculative philosophy all contributed greatly to the emergence of new humanistic art forms. Rarely, though, have scholars asked whether a common institutional culture united the scientific and humanistic academies across disciplinary divides that "Renaissance men" famously refused to acknowledge. This essay, an interdisciplinary synthesis of existing scholarship, attempts just that, discerning a move toward practices of "objectivity" across the entire academy movement.