Ian Maclean is a graduate of Oxford, where he also did his doctorate; he was for twenty-four years a Fellow and Praelector in French at Queen's College Oxford, and Lecturer then Reader in Modern Languages in the University of Oxford. He became a titular professor in Renaissance Studies in the University, before moving to All Souls as a Senior Research Fellow in History in 1996. He has held visiting fellowships in Australia, USA, Canada, France, the Netherlands and Germany. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Chevalier des arts et des lettres (France), and a member of the Academia Europaea.

• Introduction ; 1. Visualization in Renaissance Optics: The Function of Geometrical Diagrams and Pictures in the Transmission of Practical Knowledge ; 2. Medieval Sundials and Manuscript Sources: The Transmission of Information about the Navicula and the organum ptolomei in Fifteenth-Century Europe ; 3. The Uses of Pictures in the Formation of Learned Knowledge: The Cases of Leonhard Fuchs and Andreas Vesalius ; 4. Where Logical Necessity Becomes Visual Persuasion: Descartes's Clear and Distinct Illustrations ; 5. Diagrams in the Defence of Galen: Medical Uses of Tables, Squares, Dichotomies, Wheels, and Latitudes, 1480-1574 ; 6. The Production and Distribution of Mutio Oddi's Dello squadro (1625) ; 7. Objects of Knowledge: Mathematics and Models in Sixteenth-Century Cosmology and Astronomy ; 8. Kepler's Epitome: New Images for an Innovative Book ; 9. 'Docet parva pictura, quod multae scripturae non dicunt.' Frontispieces, their Functions, and their Audiences in Seventeenth-Century Mathematical Sciences ; Index

This collection of essays is a strong contribution to the growing literature integrating the history of science with the history of the book. Together, these essays show what is possible when historians take seriously the idea that early modern knowledge was embedded in material, social, cultural and economic contexts, and can only be fully understood in terms of the ways in which it was embodied in words, images and instruments.