ABSTRACT
Renaissance scientists discovered that their modes of discourse were crucial to their larger success. While forcing every thinking man to reconstruct his world view, the Renaissance scientist took great pains to provide emotional and psychological relief by means of style. The medieval and Renaissance chemists might have succeeded in bridging the gap between religion and science; had they done so, it would have been a feat accomplished by figures of speech. All the scientists of the Renaissance attempted to provide the relief for their disturbed readers, and they were increasingly successful. Though Paracelsus and his followers blurred the distinction between physical and spiritual worlds, and between literary and experimental materials, men like Bacon took up the cause and fought for it in a manner of greater purity and candor. The best scientists managed to strengthen their readers’ faith in older systems of knowledge while broadening their capacity to accept another, apparently congenial, philosophy of nature.
