The Age of Subtlety

The Age of Subtlety is the first book-length study to examine the seventeenth-century craze for rhetorical conceits in connection with scientific and technological debates. Focusing on Italy and Spain, it argues that these intricate and challenging metaphors became embodiments of a competition between natural and human ingenuity, as well as sites to reflect on the consequences of telescopic and microscopic vision, the boundaries between natural and artificial, and the generation of life.