Between empiricism and tradition: reassessing Francesco Stelluti’s Trattato del legno fossile (1637)

Abstract

This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of Trattato del legno fossile (1637), the only palaeontological work published by Francesco Stelluti, a founding member of the prestigious Accademia dei Lincei. The treatise offers a detailed description of fossil wood from the area of Todi (Umbria, central Italy) and represents an important document for understanding early seventeenth-century interpretations of fossils. Despite Stelluti’s rigorous observational practice, expressed through meticulous descriptions, classification attempts and extensive illustrations, he endorsed an inorganic origin for the fossil wood, attributing its formation to subterranean heat, mineral waters and “transmutative” properties of clay. His interpretation reflects the theoretical pluralism of the early modern period, when traditional mineralogical explanations, emerging empirical approaches and increasingly widespread organic interpretations coexisted. Stelluti’s account reveals the tension between innovative Lincean methodologies, centred on observation and visual documentation, and the persistence of sixteenth-century natural-philosophical frameworks. The treatise, therefore, provides a crucial window into the pre-Stenonian phase of palaeontology, illustrating how careful empirical work could still operate within inadequate conceptual models. More broadly, Stelluti’s work highlights the complex, non-linear development of Earth Sciences in early modern Italy, documenting the interplay between tradition and innovation at a time when the scientific understanding of fossils was undergoing profound transformation.