Giovan Battista della Porta and Francis Bacon on Philosophical Instruments and Experimental Trials

Dana Jalobeanu's project aimed to investigate the complex and creative ways in which Francis Bacon read and used Della Porta’s Magia naturalis as a sourcebook of problems, questions, and suggestions for developing sophisticated experimental trials. Jalobeanu looked more particularly at the various ways in which Bacon transformed and manipulated Della Porta’s recipes and technologies, by integrating them in experimental series and by subsuming them to (different) theoretical questions. The aim was to show that Bacon’s rewriting of Della Porta’s recipes contain a supplementary layer of methodological considerations, leading to a better visualization of the phenomenon under investigation.