1131
[Forts. von S. 1130]
public-works projects that entailed extensive study of ancient texts, artifacts, and practices. In dramatic ways, the alliance between humanist antiquarian studies and contemporary hydraulic engineering projects was strengthened and reinforced.
[…]
Urban reform, including massive hydraulic engineering projects, was seen as a direct corollary to the reform of the church itself. In addition, the abundance of antiquities and the existence of the ancient Roman aqueducts were prominent, distinguishing features of Rome, as was the complex patronage situation, exacerbated by the radical changes brought about by papal death and election.
[…]
Yet the strong alliance between engineering and antiquarian studies explored here has a broader significance for the development of empirical methodologies in the late Renaissance. Far from being relegated to un- adorned solutions by skilled but unlettered practitioners, practical problems in hydraulic engineering became part of a learned discourse. This discourse contributed to the legitimation of engineering as a discipline characterized both by learning and by a fundamental concern with practical solutions to engineering problems in the material world. It is this combined concern that contributed to the conceptual changes underlying the devel- opment of the new sciences in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
[End]