Abstract Summary
This paper proposes a comparative investigation of the use of emblems in two leading vitalist natural philosophies of the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno and Francis Bacon. Bruno and Bacon are rarely treated together. And yet, they share a lot: an“operative” vision of scientia, an appetitive matter-theory, a belief in the powers of imagination. Both see the natural philosopher as a manipulator of the material appetites engaged in a "renovation” of knowledge and power. Further, more precise, similarities are not immediately apparent, mostly because of our own historiographic assumptions. My proposal in this paper is to rely on Ioan Petru Culianu’s more flexible historiographic framework in order to provide a broader and more comprehensive context for my comparison. Culianu sees magic as a very general, “phantasmatic process” operating upon desires and appetites of matter. Since the human mind cannot operate without phantasms, magic is everywhere – intersubjective, intrasubjective and not always crossing the treshold of human awareness. Culianu’s “sciences of the Renaissance” can be interpreted as various attempts to control, operationalize and understand this process. Within this framework, my scope is to analyze Bruno and Bacon’s use of emblems – codified procedures intended to fix the meaning of phantasms – in order to unearth further similarities between their respective attempts to understand and exploit various “phantasmatic manipulations.” I show how for Bacon and Bruno – and, perhaps not surprisingly, for Culianu as well – emblems have not only mnemonic, but also heuristic functions, while also serving as “magic tools” to create patterns and “binds” for the imagination.
