De generationewas the last of the three works published by William Harvey during his lifetime. Although this work on generation was most ambitious, being the product of prolonged and detailed researches, it has received relatively little attention from modern writers. It is generally felt that this work, like William Gilbert'sDe mundo, departs significantly from the more pronounced empirical approach to science which characterized Harvey's first publication,De motu cordis. De generationeshows that Harvey regarded reference to teleological and vitalistic principles as necessary (...) for the solution of crucial problems in biology. In this respect he differed from his contemporaries, the iatrochemical and iatromechanical physiologists, whose non-teleological approach seems, at least superficially, to be in sympathy with the modern biological tradition. The structure and content ofDe generationeare so evidently determined by Aristotle's biological writings, that the work is used to illustrate Harvey's failure to emancipate himself from the philosophical encumbrances of antiquity. (shrink)

Jean Fernel and William Harvey were leading medical practitioners of their respective generations, but they also worked in natural philosophy, and, in particular, were well known for their works on...

In the faculty of arts at the University of Padua in the years around 1600 professors debated the reliability of astrology, the existence of occult celestial influences, and the idea that celestial heat is present in living bodies. From the 1570s to the 1620s many professors in the faculty of arts pushed back against astrology and Jean Fernel's theories surrounding astral body. Girolamo Mercuriale, Alessandro Massaria and Eustachio Rudio thought that some forms of astral causation and Fernel's ideas were incompatible (...) with their observations of disease, Aristotle's philosophy and Hippocratic theories. Later, Santorio Santorio and Cesare Cremonini, who were allied to the political circle of Paolo Sarpi, polemicized against astrology. Their writings show that at Padua medical theory was linked to Aristotelian cosmology, which emphasized the incommensurability between celestial and terrestrial elements. Their rejection of astrology, however, did not lead to the complete marginalization of astrology at Padua. By the middle of the 1620s, as the political climate changed in Venice, the University of Padua hired professors who promoted astrology and Fernel's theories about the celestial nature of innate heat. The diversity of opinions about astrology reflected Venice's divided politics and multiple approaches to interpreting Aristotle and other authorities. (shrink)

In his embryological treatise De plastica seminis facultate , Jacob Schegk , professor of philosophy and medicine at the University of Tübingen, developed, through a unique interpretation of the Aristotelian embryology, a theory of the "plastic faculty" , whose origin lay in the Galenic idea of the formative power. The present study analyses the precise nature of Schegk's theory, by setting it in its historical and intellectual context. It will also discuss the hitherto unappreciated Neoplatonic dimension of Schegk's notion of (...) the soul's vehicle. (shrink)

Se aborda aquí la transformación de la idea de una primigenia identidad entre palabras y cosas, lenguaje y mundo, que tuvo lugar en Venecia en el s. XVI.

ABSTRACTHardly a few people manage to escape big fears without dying [of them]; not so with pains. This statement captures Cardano's understanding of the difference between mental and physical pain. As a physician with a lifelong history of anxiety and alienation, Cardano inquired ceaselessly into the nature of the delicate interaction between the two kinds of pain. It was his belief that the subtle nature of mental suffering makes it difficult, if not impossible, to identify, name, and give a meaning (...) to those powerful emotions which cause our inner turmoil. Unable to be ‘named’ and ‘signified’, mental pain eludes understanding and thereby deprives the mind of its identity as a locus of sense. In the experience of physical pain, conversely, the mind can easily decode the signs in the body, keeping its mastery over sense-perception, the imagination, and desire. For this reason, Cardano believed, many people afflicted by sorrow and grief find solace in physical pain, which in its purest form is even able to enhance our cognitive potential. (shrink)