Introduction: The Nature of Invention

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Notes

1. “Inventor dictus, quòd in ea quae quaerit, venit. unda & ipsa quae appellatur inventio, si verbi originem retractemus, quid aliud resonat, nisi quia invenire est in id venire quod quaeritur?” Isidore, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Originum libri viginti, 245.

2. Ibid, 87, 69, 342. On later medieval ideas of the inventor, see Dorn von Rossum, “Novitas – Inventores.”

3. Fleming, ed. Invention of Discovery, however, suggests renewed attention to distinctive period notions of discovery.

4. Keller, “Renaissance Humanist.”

5. Atkinson, Inventing Inventors, 2; Iliffe, “Masculine Birth of Time,” 434.

6. Atkinson, Inventing Inventors, 59; Pasch, De novis inventis.

7. Pasch, De novis inventis, 738.

8. Markey, “Stradano's Allegorical Invention.”

9. Kris and Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic.

10. “De faire ce que i'ay descouvert d'aulcuns, se couvrir des armes d'aultruy iusques à ne montrer pas seulement le bout de ses doigts; conduire son desseing, comme il est aysé aux sçavants en une matiere commune, soubs les inventions anciennes rappiecees par cy par la: à ceulx qui les veulent cacher et faire propres,c ‘est premierement injustice et lacheté, que, n'ayant rien en leur vaillant par où se produire, ils cherchent à se presenter par une valeur purement estrangère.  … ” Montaigne, Les essais, 81.

11. Keller, “Renaissance Humanist,” 352.

12. The locus classicus is Archimedes' sphere, as in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations: “For when Archimedes fastened on a globe the movements of moon, sun and five wandering stars, he, just like Plato's God who built the world in the Timaeus, made one revolution of the sphere control several movements utterly unlike in slowness and speed. Now if in this world of ours phenomena cannot take place without the act of God, neither could Archimedes have reproduced the same movements upon a globe without divine genius” Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, Book 1, Section XXV, 63. Tortelli described modern inventions competing with those of Daedalus, Pan, Mercury, Jupiter, and other ancient gods. A strong defense of invention was made by Christine de Pizan, based on a Euhemerist interpretation of ancient divine inventors. De Pizan, City of Women, 70–86.

13. Popplow, Neu, nützlich und erfindungsreich; Long, “Invention, Authorship.”