Giovan Battista Della Porta and the Invention of Experimental Magic: Collaborative Empiricism and the Dialectic of Disclosure and Secrecy

This chapter explores Giovan Battista Della Porta’s Magia naturalis as a pivotal site for the development of experimental approaches to natural philosophy in Renaissance Naples. Focusing on the expanded twenty-book edition (Magiae naturalis libri XX), it examines how Della Porta combined a Peripatetic framework with empirical inquiry to investigate medicine, alchemy, optics, and mechanics, positioning the magus as both coordinator and guarantor of collective knowledge. The study highlights the collaborative dimension of his work, exemplified by the Academia Secretorum Naturae, and situates it within broader Neapolitan intellectual networks that fostered shared experimentation and practical innovation. It also emphasizes Della Porta’s commitment to disseminating knowledge, including through vernacular publications, as part of a moral and ethical vision that linked empirical research to public benefit. By analyzing the interplay of openness, secrecy, collaboration, and guiding authority in Della Porta’s methodology, the paper argues that Magia naturalis illuminates the transitional epistemology of early modern science, revealing the complex processes through which natural magic engaged with empirical and experimental practices.