Science Meets Politics: Machiavelli’s Influence and the Birth of Political Science

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Machiavelli’s early influence was more penetrating than has ever been believed, and this book explains why. The surprising answer leads the reader into the depths of the history of science, connecting Machiavelli’s thought to new ways of thinking about experience, history, nature, and politics. This book argues that Machiavelli’s works resonated with readers not merely because of the political and moral questions they raised and answered, but equally because of the ways in which Machiavelli engaged with these questions. His method reinforced the readers’ own belief in the importance of an inductive and comparative approach, which relied on facts and numbers drawn from history and experience.

An impressive book that, for a change, measures Machiavelli's writings not against 21st-century binary schemes, but rather against the knowledge categories and strategies of his 16th-century contemporaries and successors. Navigating skillfully among texts and authors both well-known and recondite, the author shows how the Florentine's ideas prompted and shaped a revolution in Western thought.
William J Connell, Professor of History, Seton Hall University

If you have ever wondered why Francis Bacon frequently quoted and lavished praise on Niccolò Machiavelli, this is the book for you. In it, Gábor Almási situates the latter with regard to the science of his time and shows that he was read initially in Italy, then in France, and finally in England as the exponent of an empiricism – divorced from theology, metaphysics, and morals – as pertinent to the study of the natural world as it is to the study of politics.
Paul A. Rahe, Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage, Hillsdale College
Copyright Year:
2025
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Published
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978-90-04-73694-8
Publication:
26 May 2025
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-73693-1
Publication:
12 Jun 2025
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Gábor Almási, Ph.D. (1972), is a lecturer at the University of Innsbruck. His interests range from Renaissance studies to pre-modern nationalism. He has published extensively on the fortunes of Machiavelli, including a monograph on Kaspar Schoppe’s Secretissima instructio (ELTE BTK, 2014).
Acknowledgements

Introduction
 1 On the Earliest Reception of Machiavelli’s Ideas
 2 Machiavelli: More Than a Republican Hero
 3 Machiavelli and Early Modern ‘Science’
 4 Machiavelli the ‘Scientist’?
 5 The Structure and Rationale of This Book

1 What Was Science in Renaissance Florence?
 1 The Sciences and the Arts
 2 Medicine versus Law in Humanist Debates
 3 Res et Verba
 4 Science in the Florentine Chancery

2 Machiavelli’s Science
 1 From Machiavelli’s Letter to Becchi to the Discourse on Valdichiana
 2 The Ghiribizzi to Soderini
 3 Machiavelli’s Correspondence with Vettori
 4 History and Reason
 5 Machiavelli’s Historical Revolt
 6 The Perspective of Art
 7 Machiavelli’s Language and Method
 8 Scientia, Authorities, and Humanism

3 Science and Method in Machiavelli’s Early Reception
 1 Guicciardini on Machiavelli’s Method
 2 Aristotelian Machiavelli / Machiavellian Aristotle?
 3 Aristotle’s Method in the Politics
 4 The Question of Averroism
 5 Machiavelli’s First Aristotelian-Averroist Enthusiast: Agostino Nifo
 6 Nifo’s Plagiarism of The Prince
 7 Girolamo Cardano Reads Machiavelli
 8 Cardano’s Views on Science

4 Experience, Reason, and History: Machiavelli Gains a Name for Himself
 1 Cardinal Pole Grapples with ‘Experience’
 2 Machiavelli Read for Action
 3 Machiavelli’s Science in Le Prince: Gaspar d’Auvergne and the Cappel Family
 4 Jacques Gohory’s Microcosm and Macrocosm
 5 Science and Experience Meet historia: Machiavelli’s Latin Translations
 6 Historia and Francesco Patrizi
 7 Machiavelli and the ars historica in France

5 Machiavelli Goes Underground and Triumphs
 1 The Tragedy of Saint Bartholomew
 2 Gentillet’s Anti-Machiavel (1576)
 3 The Rise of a New Awareness
 4 A Wealth of Political Literature
 5 Machiavelli Triumphs in Language: the Medical Metaphors
 6 Machiavelli Triumphs in Genre: the Hippocratic Aphorisms

6 The Advancement of Politics and Science
 1 New Perspectives: the Global View
 2 Botero’s Comparative Vision of Greatness
 3 The Perspective of Work and Action in Botero
 4 The Perspective of Work and Action in Bacon
 5 Facts, Information, and Numbers: New Knowledge for Politics
 6 Bacon’s Science: Power and Happiness?

7 Conclusions
Bibliography
Index
The breadth and scope of this study make it a valuable read for any student and scholar interested in the history of ideas, politics, and science.
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