Anyone who has followed my explorations over the years should recognize my appreciation for both polymaths and scholars who defy conventional expectations. Given this, I was thrilled when asked if I would like a review copy of a fresh biography of the seventeenth-century anatomist, palaeologist, geologist, and religious convert, Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686). Naturally, I accepted with enthusiasm. The book in focus is Nuno Castel-Branco’s *The Traveling Anatomist: Nicolaus Steno and the Intersection of Disciplines in Early Modern Science*.
Castel-Branco has produced not merely another standard biography of a scientist but a comprehensive guide on how to research, analyze, and recount the academic life journey of a multifaceted and fascinating interdisciplinary scholar.
The most significant insight I gained from reading this remarkable book was that, according to the criteria of his time, Steno was not considered a polymath. Castel-Branco shares:
In the early modern era, polymaths or polyhistors were individuals who sought to grasp all available knowledge, an attitude intimately linked to encyclopedism. A quintessential example of a seventeenth-century polymath is Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (1602–1680), whose ambitions for universal knowledge were well-known at the time. Another prominent polymath of that era was Leibniz, whose primary aim was to establish a “general science [scientia generalis]” encompassing all things. These instances align with the definition of polymathy articulated by the German scholar Johann von Wower (c. 1574–1612) in his *De polymathia tractatio (Treatise on Polymathy; Hamburg, 1603)*, the first book to carry the term in its title. Polymathy was characterized as “the knowledge of various things … spreading itself very widely gathered from all kinds of studies” [ex omni genere studiorum collectam, latissimi sese effundentum]. Wower also noted that the crucial attribute of the polymath was the mastery of grammar, one of the seven liberal arts most closely tied to reading. Since they engaged with numerous texts across diverse fields, seventeenth-century polymaths employed distinctive note-taking strategies to absorb and retain most of the information available to them. Steno acquired these reading techniques, which influenced his scientific endeavors significantly. He also shared interests with Kircher and Leibniz, both of whom he encountered during his travels. However, unlike them, Steno did not aim to acquire comprehensive knowledge.
In summary, from an early modern viewpoint, Nicolaus Steno did not fit the mold of a polymath. He engaged in wide reading like polymaths but directed his understanding toward specific intellectual challenges instead. He even expressed dissatisfaction when new inquiries diverted his attention from his ongoing projects. He was concerned that distractions might lead to superficial scientific output—a critique some scholars leveled at the works of Kircher and other polymaths. In this book, I characterize Steno’s methodological approach as *focused interdisciplinarity*.
This is quite the extended quotation, and we’re merely on page 10 of over three hundred! But rest assured, I will not transform this into one of my infamous ten-thousand-word book reviews. I present this for two reasons: first, it beautifully showcases the depth of Castel-Branco’s research; these three hundred words contain a total of seven footnotes, all of which are far from superficial. Secondly, throughout his book, Castel-Branco systematically unpacks the remarks made here about Steno’s reading and note-taking practices and how he subsequently applied the insights gained to various domains of his work. Most importantly, Castel-Branco presents his concept of *focused interdisciplinarity*, which he regards as central to all of Steno’s scientific endeavors. He elaborates:
Steno’s focused interdisciplinarity was a reaction to particular intellectual issues of the early modern era. By the late 1650s, various new systems had emerged, each claiming to elucidate natural phenomena, yet presenting notable fundamental differences. For example, the natural philosopher and Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) acknowledged the existence of the vacuum, while René Descartes dismissed it; Jesuit mathematicians embraced a geo-heliocentric model of astronomy, conflicting with Galileo’s heliocentrism. These theories accounted for the available observations, but they often contradicted one another, rendering them all impossible to be true simultaneously. Steno encountered analogous discord in anatomy and the origins of fossils and became fixated on resolving these issues through what I term a search for certainty. Certainty did not necessarily equate to the absolute assurance of geometry, but rather to the reliability of knowledge which, due to its compelling and precise descriptions, persuaded others of its veracity. Steno believed