Covering a broad range of topics, this text provides a comprehensive survey of the modelling of chaotic dynamics and complexity in the natural and social sciences. Its attention to models in both the physical and social sciences and the detailed philosophical approach make this an unique text in the midst of many current books on chaos and complexity. Including an extensive index and bibliography along with numerous examples and simplified models, this is an ideal course text.

ABSTRACT This article analyzes a polemic of Italian Humanism around Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). In that period, intellectuals such as Cristoforo Landino (1424-1498) and Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) interpreted Dante’s writing through the platonic prism of the Phaedrus, that is, as someone who was granted the grace to contemplate the divine and the power to describe it. Decades earlier, however, Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) and Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) had already attributed to Dante the merit of focusing on formal studies and, with (...) that, being able to develop expressive artifices to his poetry on its own. For the analysis of the different readings, excerpts in which Dante gives evidence of his path and intellectual maturity will be observed, as well as those in which it is possible to observe the poet’s role in the dissemination of formal knowledge in line with his ethical values. (shrink)

Le génie de Léonard de Vinci, celui de Michel-Ange ressortent mieux sur le fond révélateur de l’Académie de Careggi, où Marsile Ficin règne en maître, évoquant sinon invoquant Platon. La culture platonicienne entretenue par Ficin - mais Cristoforo Landino ou Ange Politien sont tour à tour convoqués - délimite le contour d’un nouvel ordre artistique dont André Chastel, dans un travail de jeunesse qui engage déjà ses subtiles analyses d’histoire de l’art et des idées, rend raison avec passion. (...) En quelques pages lumineuses, Jean Wirth donne à ce maître livre sa juste place dans une tradition historiographique qu’il a contribué à renouveler. (shrink)

All’interno del dialogo _Della Dignità e Nobiltà delle Donne _(1622), Cristoforo Bronzini afferma con decisione che numerose donne nel corso della storia si sono distinte nell’ambito della scrittura, a dispetto di obsoleti pregiudizi: l’articolo si propone di indagare le modalità con le quali Bronzini declina il paradigma della differenza di genere, offrendo nello specifico una breve panoramica sulle scrittrici umanistico-rinascimentali che l’autore propone come massimi _exempla_ _virtutis_.

Duranti gli anni della _Querelle des femmes_ si è assistito ad un’importante crescita di testi in difesa o in detrazione della causa femminile. Una delle caratteristiche principali di questa tendenza letteraria risiede nelle reciproche relazioni che le opere stabiliscono tra loro, attraverso una fitta rete di richiami intertestuali. Il Dialogo _Della Dignità e della nobiltà delle donne_ (1624) dello scrittore marchigiano Cristoforo Bronzini aderisce appieno alla pratica intertestuale che mette a servizio della memoria storico-culturale. Nel presente articolo si analizzano (...) i rapporti intertestuali del trattato seicentesco con opere di scrittrici come Lucrezia Marinella, Moderata Fonte ed Isabella Cervoni, mettendo in rilievo le diverse funzioni che l’intertestualità adempie nei testi della _Querelle des femmes_. (shrink)

Fundamental to the modern conception of historical perspective was the position that nature had its own integrity and that a common human nature underlay human action in history. The first tenet was an achievement of the Scholastics, the second of Italian humanists of the fourteenth century. In order to justify the reading of ancient pagan texts an early humanist Albertino Mussato had resorted to the late ancient and medieval tradition that the pagan poets had been divinely inspired to predict the (...) coming of Christ and a number of other revealed truths. Subsequently, however, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Salutati argued that if poetic genius was a divine gift to individuals, poetic creation was a product of human effort. The consequent desanctification of the ancient writers allowed them to be approached as historical human beings. Nevertheless, the new enthusiasm for Plato beginning with Bruni initiated a retreat from this position and a return to the medieval confusion between the world of grace and the world of nature. By the second half of the fifteenth century, Plato’s “divine madness of the poets” was being interpreted to mean that the ancient poets had been divinely inspired to utter Christian truths. (shrink)

The paper examines the definitions of the concept ›philosophy‹ resp. ›the philosopher‹ in Florentine renaissance Platonism, namely Marsilio Ficino and his scholar Francesco di Zanobi Cattani da Diacceto. Following Socrates and Pythagoras, Ficino distinguishes between mundane philosophy and divine sapientia. In contrast to his teacher, Diacceto's Aristotelism rejects the Pythagoreanism and connects philosophy with sapientia. In order to show how the differences between Ficino and Diacceto emerge, three more contemporaries are taken into consideration: Christoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano and Giovanni (...) Pico della Mirandola. As a result of this examination, it can be said that the definition of ›philosophy‹ in Florentine renaissance Platonism tends either to Pythagoreism or to Aristotelism or to both. Closely connected with the debate on philosophy are topics and maxims such as meditatio mortis, theologia negativa, docta ignorantia, scio ne scio, nosce te ipsum, ne quid nimis et al. (shrink)

Dans cet article nous examinons les tensions dialectiques entre les humanistes renaissants et les scolastiques renaissants telles qu’elles sont représentées dans la culture orale des sermons, des conférences universitaires et des débats publics à Florence à la fin du Quattrocento. Nous tâchons de montrer comment cette culture orale reflète d’importants aspects de ce nouvel environnement que nous intitulons « la Renaissance » et qui ne correspond pas toujours à certaines notions historiographiques populaires surannées d’un mouvement laïc et antireligieux. Les sermons (...) prononcés au sein des fraternités religieuses par des humanistes tels que Francesco Berlinghieri, Giovanni Cocchi, Christoforo Landino, entre autres, constituent le principal objet d’étude de notre première partie ; nous examinons ensuite l’un des documents les plus importants de la Renaissance : De la dignité de l’homme de Pic de la Mirandole. Dans notre deuxième partie nous nous penchons sur la réaction de Giovanni Caroli au projet de Pic et dressons une comparaison entre les deux en abordant les intentions et méthodes qui distinguent leurs approches respectives de la philosophie et de la théologie. (shrink)

Le traduz oni medievali di Platone e Francesco Petrarca.--Il preteso ascetismo del Petrarca.--Intorno alla biografia di Paolo Veneto.--La cronologia del De anima di C. Landino.--Leone Ebreo e Spinoza.--Religione e virtu in Machiavelli.--L'etica di Machiavelli.--Studi bruniani.--Di una traduzione delle opere di G. C. Vanini.--Il primo processo d'eresia di T. Campanella.--Le varie redazioni del De sensu rerum di Tommaso Campanella.--Le varie redazioni del De sensu rerum di Tommaso Campanella con un saggio del testo italiano inedito.--I manoscritti di Campanella e la sua (...) religione.--Tommaso Caompanella nella storia della filosofia.--Galileo e i filosofi napoletani.--Contributo alla storia del metodo storico. (shrink)

The paper examines the definitions of the concept ‘philosophy’ resp. ‘the philosopher’ in Florentine renaissance Platonism, namely Marsilio Ficino and his scholar Francesco di Zanobi Cattani da Diacceto. Following Socrates and Pythagoras, Ficino distinguishes between mundane philosophy and divine sapientia. In contrast to his teacher, Diacceto’s Aristotelism rejects the Pythagoreanism and connects philosophy with sapientia. In order to show how the differences between Ficino and Diacceto emerge, three more contemporaries are taken into consideration: Christoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano and Giovanni (...) Pico della Mirandola. As a result of this examination, it can be said that the definition of ‘philosophy’ in Florentine renaissance Platonism tends either to Pythagoreism or to Aristotelism or to both. Closely connected with the debate on philosophy are topics and maxims such as meditatio mortis, theologia negativa, docta ignorantia, scio ne scio, nosce te ipsum, ne quid nimis et al. (shrink)

Working from transcriptions generated through the T-PEN program at St. Louis University, the collaborators of the project "Petrarch’s Early Manuscripts and Incunabula in the Oregon Petrarch Open Book" are presently digitizing and encoding in TEI P5 2 key interpretative copies of Petrarch’s Rvf: the late 14th-century manuscript copy from the Queriniana Library in Brescia, D II 21, the Queriniana Library’s copy of the first printed edition of the Rvf edited by Cristoforo [Berardi?] and published by Vindelin de Speier in (...) Venice in 1470. The first part of the article traces a brief history of the Oregon Petrarch Open Book, the last section introduces a future project, “Texts, Images and Interpretation in the OPOB”. (shrink)