Pioneering Scientific Society
Della Porta was the founder of a scientific society called the Academia Secretorum Naturae (Accademia dei Segreti). This group was more commonly known as the Otiosi, (Men of Leisure). Founded sometime before 1580, the Otiosi were one of the first scientific societies in Europe and their aim was to study the "secrets of nature." Any person applying for membership had to demonstrate they had made a new discovery in the natural sciences.
The Academia Secretorum Naturae was compelled to disband when its members were suspected of dealing with the Occult. Della Porta was summoned to Rome by Pope Paul V. Though he personally emerged from the meeting unscathed, the Academia Secretorum Naturae disbanded. Despite this incident, della Porta remained religiously devout and became a lay Jesuit brother.
Della Porta joined The Academy of the Lynxes in 1610.
Read more about this topic: Giambattista Della Porta
Famous quotes containing the words pioneering, scientific and/or society:
“You know what I’m talking about. This business has changed. Flyers aren’t pilots anymore, they’re engineers. This is a college man’s game. Our work is done. The pioneering is over.”
—Frank W. Wead (1895?–1947)
“A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)