Audio recording of a lecture delivered on March 24, 2017, by Chester Burke as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Mr. Burke describes his lecture: "In The Assayer (1623), Galileo Galilei famously proclaimed that 'Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze.' In this lecture, I propose to consider this statement from the perspective of the history of the book. In examining early modern learning as a bookish enterprise, we come to see the sciences as active, interventionist processes through which knowledge about the world was constructed, book and pen in hand."