A Brief History of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy

There is a very special role, a special epistemological role, that's being played by the wondrous especially in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. This is the moment when the entire edifice of natural philosophy and astronomy begins to crumble. And so for the first time, you get a much sharper line between the marvellous and the miraculous. So these wonders, tho, these collections of wonders, become a battering ram against the old philosophy.