An article titled “Likeness across Nature: The Anatomical Eye of Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente (1533–1619),” by Associate Professor of History Mackenzie Cooley, appears in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nuncius (Volume 39, No. 2, 2024). The theme of the issue is “Touching Visions: Intersensoriality and Gender in the History of Science.”
Known as one of the founders of modern embryology, Italian surgeon and anatomist Fabricius aimed to teach his students and readers how to think about nature in a broader way. In her article, Cooley suggests that Fabricius wanted people to develop an “anatomical eye” — a way of seeing the body’s structure and nature’s design that combined what anatomists could feel and see.
Fabricius taught and learned by using his sense of touch, feeling the texture of organs and comparing reproductive anatomy across different animals with his hands, Cooley said. By dissecting animals like sheep, cattle, horses, sharks, guinea pigs, dogs, and humans, he gathered information about the similarities and differences in how nature had created them.
Although artists sometimes struggled to show what he experienced, Cooley said, Fabricius’s commitment to working with them showed that he believed expanding this “anatomical eye,” and the recognition that came with it, was worth the effort.
Cooley noted that much of the research for “Likeness across Nature” came from work done from 2019 to 2020 for the New World Nature Project. She acknowledged the contributions of Kate Biedermann ’22, her research assistant at that time.
