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The Situated Science of Nicola Caputi examines the scientific writings of Nicola Caputi (1696–1761), a physician from Salento and member of the Neapolitan Academy of Sciences. The book offers the first comprehensive study of Caputi’s oeuvre, reconstructing his role as a local observer within the early eighteenth-century scientific culture of the Kingdom of Naples.. At the center stands the De tarantulae anatome et morsu (1741), a natural history of the Apulian tarantula and tarantism that integrates anatomical dissections, microscopic observations, and clinical cases with reflections on testimony and authority. Alongside this major work, the volume analyzes Caputi’s pharmacological dissertation on the delfinio—composed in 1733 and published in 1741—concerning a Salentine plant studied for its therapeutic efficacy against fevers, and his Guadina difesa (1751), an environmental inquiry into the salubrity of a contested body of water near Lecce.. Together, these writings illuminate the interplay between local knowledge, experimental practice, and epistemic self-representation, showing how wonders and singular phenomena could be investigated within the methodological framework of early modern natural philosophy.
"De Carli's The Situated Science of Nicola Caputi makes significant and original contributions to our understanding of scientific practice in the eighteenth-century Kingdom of Naples. It provides a rigorous and comprehensive examination of Caputi's medical and scientific achievements, while situating them within the broader social and intellectual context of early modern Italy"—Antonio Clericuzio, Professor of History of Science and Technology, Roma Tre University.
"De Carli’s brilliant book sheds light on the relationship between wonder, experimental science, and situated knowledge in the early modern Kingdom of Naples. Through Nicola Caputi’s investigations into tarantism, medicine, and environmental phenomena in Salento, it offers an original contribution to the history of science and peripheral knowledge networks."—Camilla Cavicchi, CNRS Research Engineer and Vice-Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies in Tours.
"The Situated Science of Nicola Caputi offers an original and methodologically innovative contribution to the historiography of early modern science, combining rigorous scholarship with a lucid and engaging style. The volume will be of considerable interest to scholars across the history of science, culture, medicine, and ideas"—Luana Rizzo, University of Salento.
Manuel De Carli (PhD) is a chercheur associé at the Center for Advanced Renaissance Studies, University of Tours. His research focuses on the intersections between natural philosophy, natural history, music therapy, and medical practice, with particular attention to tarantism and to the epistemic role of wonders and occult qualities in early modern science.
1. Testifying to Wonder: Observation, Authority, and Credibility in a Peripheral Member of the Neapolitan Academy of Sciences; 2. A Physician Between the Land of Otranto and Naples: The Scientific Experience of Nicola Caputi; 3. Anatomy of the Tarantula and Authorial Self- Representation: Caputi and the Situated Science of Tarantism; 4. Observing, Classifying, Healing: Local Botany and Experimental Medicine; 5. Suspicious Waters: Public Health and Experimental Knowledge in the Periphery of the Kingdom; 6. Conclusions; Bibliography; Index