Re: VMs: 1006184 & 1006185

["GC" <gc-@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a true statement, Nick.  The only value of the printed book over the
manuscript was the speedy dissemination of an idea.  The process wasn't any
different, only exponentially faster.

GC



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nick Pelling" <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 1:40 AM
Subject: Re: VMs: 1006184 & 1006185


> Hi everyone,
>
> At 19:36 10/06/2004 -0600, GC wrote:
> >What's interesting about the early printed books is that, even though you
> >may have the same plant growing in your back yard, if it didn't come from
> >the place Pliny or Dioscorides, or some other ancient author said it
should
> >come from,
> >your local plant was never as good as the foreign one.  There had to be
some
> >reason the local plants didn't cure as the ancients promised, so
naturally
> >they couldn't be the same as the originals, because the ancients couldn't
be
> >wrong, could they?
>
> Note that this was one of the key reasons for the existence of (typically
> manuscript) "experimenti" (like Caterina Sforza's) - to find if exotic
> ingredients in passed-down recipes could be substituted with
> locally-sourced ones. The roots of empiricism and modern science lie just
> as much in those experimenti (and in early modern "books of secrets") as
in
> the printed works of the sixteenth century.
>
> Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
>
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