Porta, also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta, was a scientist, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples, Italy during the Renaissance, Counter-Reformation and Scientific Revolution. His most important work is Magia Naturalis, published in 1558. In this work he dealt with philosophy, alchemy, mathematics, astrology, natural philosophy and meteorology. This versatility of the author made him known as the "professor of secrets".
Porta, whose father was a nobleman (Nardo Anronio), had a privileged childhood in terms of education. Porta, who had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with philosophers, mathematicians and poets in his childhood due to his father's interest in science, developed himself at an early age.
In 1563, he published his work "De Furtivis Literarum Notis" on cryptography. In this work, the first known substitution cipher was described. At the end of his work in the field of cryptography, Porta developed a method of writing secret messages inside eggs. This method was used by means of an ink made of plant pigments and alum. The ink made from this mixture can pass through the permeable eggshell, and after the egg is dried and boiled, the ink on the outside of the egg disappears and passes into the inside of the eggshell. In this way, he sent messages to his friends in prison.
In 1586, he wrote his work "De Humana Physiognomonia Libri III" on physiognomy. Porta, who worked on different subjects throughout his life, later published an agricultural encyclopaedia called "Villa". In early 1589, he tested this in an experimental environment to refute the idea that garlic could neutralise magnets. Rather than being successful or unsuccessful, this experiment is important in terms of starting to test old accepted ideas.
In the following years, Porta, who collected and cultivated exotic plants, listed the plants according to their geographical location in his work "Phytognomonica". He also made the first observations of fungal spores in his work. Porta, who also opened the plants he collected to visitors, also created the first examples of the natural history museum.
Porta was also the founder of a scientific society called "Academia Secretorum Naturae", also known as "Otiosi". This society was one of the first scientific societies in Europe and their aim was to study the secrets of nature. In order to join the society, it was necessary to make a discovery in natural sciences. In the following period, this society was disbanded by Gregory XIII on the suspicion that they were dealing with occultism.
Porta, who worked in various disciplines, also worked in military engineering and hydraulics. In 1606 he published a book on the rise of water by air force. In 1608 he published a book on distillation. Later, in other editions of his book Magia Naturalis, he worked on the "Camera Obscura" and compared the "Camera Obscura" lens and the human eye. This study was an important study in terms of being an example and beginning of how light and image come to the human eye. Apart from these studies, he also claimed to have invented the telescope, but he died while preparing his work on this subject.
Porta, who worked in more than one discipline, wrote plays on comedy and tragedy in addition to all these works.
KAYNAKÇA / REFERENCES
David Wootton: Garlic and Magnets. History Today Sayı. 66/1 (Ocak 2016), s. 38.
Louise Clubb, Giambattista Della Porta, Dramatist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965, ss. 69-301
Siegfried Zielinski: Deep Time of the Media. Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means
Arianna Borrelli: Giovan Battista Della Porta's Neapolitan Magic & His Humanistic Meteorology, in: Variantology 5. Neapolitain Affairs.
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