In late fifteenth century Florence, Renaissance humanists rediscovered a secret, natural language hidden in the visual wisdom of the proverb 'the eyes are the windows of the soul'. Through its magical prism, the language of eyes, faces, voices, laughs, walks, even stones, plants and animals, all became windows into the souls of other people, of oneself, of nature, and ultimately of God. Some saw in its words the perfect hieroglyphic language by which Adam had first named nature, which, when combined with the art of memory, could bring about a form of 'inner writing' or mystical self-transformation. Yet many others dismissed it as a collection of arbitrary conventions, superstitious enigmas, or 'gypsy' riddles. Embroiled in the religious persecution of the Reformation, rejected as a science during the Scientific Revolution, in the age of Enlightenment physiognomy came to be seen as nothing more than an amusing entertainment. But with the dawn of Romanticism, be it in the realms of science, religion, or poetry, some began to see that physiognomy was no game and the flame of serious interest in physiognomy was once again rekindled. Combining book history and visual history, Dr Porter reconstructs this physiognomical eye, interprets the way in which books on physiognomy were read and traces the wider intellectual, social, and cultural changes that contributed to the metamorphosis of this way of beholding oneself and the natural world from the Renaissance to the dawn of Romanticism.

Over the last thirty years, the European Union has created a system of environmental governance in Europe. With a large number of legislative measures, the EU's environmental policy is broad in scope, extensive in detail and often stringent in effect. Environmental governance also extends to the ways in which decision making on environmental policy has become institutionalized within Europe, both at the level of the EU itself and in the practices of the member states. This work seeks to understand this new system of environmental governance both at the European level and at the level of member states. It argues that the system is multi-level, horizontally complex, evolving and incomplete. Locating developments at the European level in theories of European integration, it goes on to examine the extent of convergence and divergence in environmental policy among six member states: Germany, Spain, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. It then looks at the operation of the system of environmental governance through an examination of policy case studies before examining the wider political significance of these developments.

From acid rain to clean drinking water, from clean beaches to packaging waste, the operation of the environmental rules in the European Union affects all our lives. This book examines how rules for environmental protection are made in Europe. It identifies the forces that shape how rules are made and why they take the form they do.