Evidence Before Science

Abstract

This chapter seeks to establish the broad boundaries that enclosed questions of evidence in early modern Europe, thereby laying the groundwork for the chapters that follow. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these boundaries were expansive, permitting the construction, interpretation, and assimilation of many kinds of evidence that later came to be seen as illegitimate. Nevertheless, these early modern varieties of evidence played a crucial role in the age of the new sciences, helping to shift the disciplines of knowledge into their modern configurations. Section 1.1 provides a brief introduction to the aims of this volume, while Sect. 1.2 offers a concise history of the word “evidence” and its meanings from its rhetorical roots in classical antiquity to its modern meaning in the seventeenth century. Section 1.3 then examines how the higher disciplines of medieval learning—law, medicine, and theology—approached the question of evidence in light of the classical definitions of proof offered by Aristotle. Finally, Sect. 1.4 considers some of the ways that early moderns discussed and contributed to new conceptions of evidence within the context of the shifting disciplines, and how the social, cultural, and religious contexts of the period shaped and weighted them.