When James Fleming and Steve Matthews started preparing what would become the first Scientiae conference, back in 2012, they were hoping for thirty, maybe forty, papers. They ended up with over a hundred, and a modern tradition was born. The present volume is a reflection of the overwhelming interest in what David Beck, the editor, conceives as a gap between humanistic Renaissance studies and the history and philosophy of science. Critically negotiating Enlightenment-imposed disciplinary boundaries, the term scientiae refers to the pursuit of natural knowledge in its many guises. ‘We are all humanists who happen to share intellectual objects’ (p. 6), says Beck in his introduction to the nine essays that make up the second collection emerging from this interdisciplinary approach to the early modern world.

The papers are loosely arranged into three sections: ‘Unity and the investigation of nature’; ‘God's two books’; and ‘Imagination and reality: time, zoology and memory’. Beck does not claim any unity or comprehensiveness, apart from the collection as a whole aiming to understand the methodologies and practices of individual and varied disciplines. The first paper, by James Fleming, immediately draws our attention to a topic normally only loosely associated with knowing nature: the concept of language. Not language in terms of taxonomy and classification, but the taxonomy and classification of language itself. Drawing upon the works of John Wilkins and George Dalgarno, Fleming connects early modern linguistics with the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, phenomenology and modern information technology in order to understand concepts of the ‘real’ character, multiplicity and world view. Stephen Pender discusses the moral physiology of laughter: how should we, according to Descartes, consider laughter? Foolish or functional? Demonstrating his mastery of this understudied topic, Pender highlights the dialogue between classical and early modern authors in order to explain how and why laughter was perceived as remedial and connected with a wider theory of human nature. In ‘The part and the whole’ Kevin Killeen draws our attention to two unlikely encyclopedias: George Hakewill's An Apologie of the Power of God (1627) and Thomas Browne's Pseudoxia Epidemica (1646). Whereas Hakewill's tome, lacking the rigid systematization of later works, aims at universal comparison, Browne's volume doubles as an anti-encyclopedia with its focus on the endemic presence of error.

The second section focuses on the tensions between God's two books, nature and Scripture. As Beck explains in his excellent introduction, historians now recognize the importance of early modern attempts to understand the Bible for the development of early modern science. Lloyd Strickland's essay is an illustration of how historians of philosophy have until very recently created a false picture of the use of Scripture in the beast-machine controversy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By analysing the exact function of scriptural references he convincingly argues against the perceived ideas of natural philosophers having to defend their theories about animals' souls. Instead of seeking to reconcile these with biblical texts, they used Scripture to provide additional evidence. Mike Zuber explores the Copernican theories of the German Johann Jacob Zimmermann (1642–1693) and his attempts to rhyme a heliocentric cosmology with a literal reading of biblical key texts to a predominantly Lutheran audience. Svorad Zavarský introduces us to the cosmography of the Hungary-based Slovak Jesuit Martinus Szent-Ivany (1633–1705), and how he dealt with poignant questions such as the possibility of extraterrestrial life and the creation of the world outside time.

The final part of the volume contains three essays that at first do not seem to have much in common, until one realizes that they all deal with visual representations of knowledge. Stephen Boyd Davis presents us with the fascinating attempts of several early modern chronologists to capture graphically the history of entire civilizations, from the striking circular chart of the Roman Empire by Girolamo Andrea Martignoni, published in 1718, to the 16.5-metre-long pseudo-logarithmic map of Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg (1753). Angelica Groom re-evaluates the concept of al vivo, the drawing of zoological images observed from life, and shows how the term equally applied to copies and derivative drawings. The final paper deals with memory and memorization strategies. Focusing on Cicero's Rhetocia ad Herennium (c.86–82 BC) and specifically John Willis's 1618 Mnemonica, sive reminiscendi Ars, Adam Rzepka explains how images, particularly of the stage, were presented as important mnemonic devices that allowed for substantial memorization, based upon real-life scenarios.

In summary this is an extremely valuable contribution to our understanding of the various strategies by which early modern people sought to understand nature. It is noteworthy that the contributors' affiliations reflect the volume's interdisciplinary approach to the concept of scientiae, with a healthy mix of historians, art historians and English scholars. While this could potentially lead to an uneasy and uneven marriage, Knowing Nature in Early Modern Europe shows none of these tensions. On the contrary, it is a beautifully edited and harmonious volume, covering a range of fascinating topics, and as such indispensable for any scholar interested in the development of early modern knowledge.