Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750

A rich exploration of how European naturalists used wonder and wonders (oddities and marvels) to envision and explain the natural world. Winner of the History of Science Society's Pfizer Prize'This book is about setting the limits of the natural and the limits of the known, wonders and wonder, from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment. A history of wonders as objects of natural inquiry is simultaneously an intellectual history of the orders of nature. A history of wonder as a passion of natural inquiry is simultaneously a history of the evolving collective sensibility of naturalists. Pursued in tandem, these interwoven histories show how the two sides of knowledge, objective order and subjective sensibility, were obverse and reverse of the same coin rather than opposed to one another.'-From the Introduction Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders,