This paper presents and analyzes the practice journal of a barber-surgeon in the town of Münster, in Northern Germany, in which he recorded about 950 cases he treated between 1602 and 1614. Based on this source, it examines the clientele and the fees of a German barber-surgeon in the early seventeenth century, and looks at the injuries and complaints for which patients sought his treatment.

Music theorists of almost all ages employ a concept of "Nature" to justify observations or statements about music. The understanding of what "Nature" is, however, is subject to cultural and historical differences. In tracing these explanatory strategies and their changes in music theories between c. 1600 and 1900, these essays explore (for the first time in a book-length study) how the multifarious conceptions of nature, located variously between scientific reason and divine power, are brought to bear on music theory and (...) how they affect our understanding of music. (shrink)

The organisational activity of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz fits squarely with the transformations in science and research that took place in the seventeenth-century Europe with the inspiration of the model presented by Francis Bacon in New Atlantis (Bacon 1626). This paper is an attempt to assess Leibniz’s efforts aimed at building a new enlightened society within the structures of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The philosopher’s reformatory projects also had an internationalist dimension for Leibniz saw science as (...) an area free of any political or societal boundaries. Leibniz’s activity in this field should be analysed not only in the context of social and civilisational changes taking place in Europe in the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century but also take into account a wide spectrum of the philosopher’s research activities and his numerous contributions to diverse fields of knowledge, the value and significance of which could only be appreciated by later generations. (shrink)

According to a grand narrative that long ago ceased to be told, there was a seventeenth century Scientific Revolution, during which a few heroes conquered nature thanks to mathematics. This grand narrative began with the exhibition of quantitative laws that these heroes, Galileo and Newton for example, had disclosed: the law of falling bodies, according to which the speed of a falling body is proportional to the square of the time that has elapsed since the beginning of its fall; (...) the law of gravitation, according to which two bodies are attracted to one another in proportion to the sum of their masses and in inverse proportion to the square of the distance separating them -- according to his own preferences, each narrator added one or two quantitative laws of this kind. The essential feature was not so much the examples that were chosen, but, rather, the more or less explicit theses that accompanied them. First, mathematization would be taken as the criterion for distinguishing between a qualitative Aristotelian philosophy and the new quantitative physics. Secondly, mathematization was founded on the metaphysical conviction that the world was created pondere, numero et mensura, or that the ultimate components of natural things are triangles, circles, and other geometrical objects. This metaphysical conviction had two immediate consequences: that all the phenomena of nature can be in principle submitted to mathematics and that mathematical language is transparent; it is the language of nature itself and has simply to be picked up at the surface of phenomena. Finally, it goes without saying that, from a social point of view, the evolution of the sciences was apprehended through what has been aptly called the "relay runner model," according to which science progresses as a result of individual discoveries. Grand narratives such as this are perhaps simply fictions doomed to ruin as soon as they are clearly expressed. In any case, the very assumption on which this grand narrative relies can be brought into question: even in the canonical domain of mechanics, the relevant epistemological units crucial to understanding the dynamics of the Scientific Revolution are perhaps not a few laws of motion, but a complex set of problems embodied in mundane objects. Moreover, each of the theses just mentioned was actually challenged during the long period of historiographical reappraisal, out of which we have probably not yet stepped. Against the sharp distinction between a qualitative Aristotelian philosophy and the new quantitative physics, numerous studies insist that Rome wasn't built in a day, so to speak. Since Antiquity, there have always been mixed sciences; the emergence of pre-classical mechanics depends on both medieval treatises and the practical challenges met by Renaissance engineers. It is indeed true that, for Aristotle, mathematics merely captures the superficial properties of things, but the Aristotelianisms were many during the Renaissance and the Early Modern period, with some of them being compatible with the introduction of mathematics in natural philosophy. In addition, the gap between the alleged program of mathematizing nature and its effective realization was underlined as most natural phenomena actually escaped mathematization; at best they were enrolled in what Thomas Kuhn began to rehabilitate under the appellation of the "Baconian sciences," i.e., empirical investigations aiming at establishing isolated facts, without relating them to any overarching theory. Hence, mathematization of nature cannot pretend to capture a historical fact: at most, it expresses an indeterminate task for generations to come. On top of these first two considerations, and against the thesis of the neutrality of the mathematical language, it was urged that mathematics is not "only a language" and that, exactly as other symbolic means or cognitive tools, it has its own constraints. For example, it has been thoroughly explained that the Euclidean theory of proportions both guides and frustrates the Galilean analysis of motion; its shortages were particularly clear with respect to the expression of continuity, which is crucial in the case of motion. Consequently, when calculus was invented and applied to the analysis of motion, it was not a transposition that left things as they stood. Even more clearly than in the case of a translation from one natural language to another, the shift from one symbolic language to another entails that certain possibilities are opened while others are closed. The cognitive constraints imposed by established mathematical theories, as seen in the theory of proportions or calculus, were not the only ones to be studied in relation to mathematization. Certain schemes dependent on the grammar of natural languages, e.g., the scheme of contrariety, or certain symbolic means of representation, e.g. geometrical diagrams and numerical tables, were also subject to such scrutiny. Lastly, it was insisted that, even if we concede the existence of scientific geniuses, mathematics is largely produced by intellectual communities and embedded within social practices. More attention was consequently paid to the forms of communication in given mathematical networks, or to the teaching of the discipline in, for example, Jesuit colleges and universities. The set of mathematical practices specific to specialized craftsmen, highly-qualified experts and engineers began to be studied in its own right. All these reflections may have helped us change our perspectives on the question of mathematization. It seems, however, that they were instead set aside, both because of a general distrust towards sweeping narratives that are always subject to the suspicion that they overlook the unyielding complexity of real history, and because of a shift in our interests. The more obscure and idiosyncratic they are, an alchemist, a patron of the sciences or a lunatic collector is nowadays honored in journals of the history of sciences. As for the general issues involved in the question of mathematization, they are rejected as obsolete, or reserved for specialized journals in the history of mathematics. Consequently, before presenting the essays of this fascicle, I would like to say a few words in favor of a renewed study of the forms of mathematization in the history of the early sciences. (shrink)

The 16th and 17th centuries marked a period of transition from the vitalistic ontology that had dominated Renaissance natural philosophy to the Early Modern mechanistic paradigm endorsed by, among others, the Cartesians and Newtonians. This paper focuses on how the tensions between vitalism and mechanism played themselves out in the context of 16th and 17th century chemistry and chemical philosophy. The paper argues that, within the fields of chemistry and chemical philosophy, the significant transition that (...) culminated in the 18th century Chemical Revolution was not a transition from vitalism to full-blown mechanism. Rather, chemical philosophy shifted from a vitalistic theory of matter and spirits to a naturalistic, physicalistic, and corpuscularian conception of chemical properties and reactions. Despite being naturalistic, physicalistic, and corpuscularian, however, this theory was not fully mechanistic. Special attention is paid to the contributions made by Paracelsus, Sebastien Basso, Jan Baptista van Helmont, and Robert Boyle to this ontological transition. (shrink)

This fourth volume traces the history of Renaissance philosophy and seventeenth century rationalism, covering Descartes and the birth of modern philosophy.

Robert Boyle, one of the most important intellectuals of the seventeenth century, was a gifted experimenter, an exceptionally able philosopher, and a dedicated Christian. In Boyle's two Excellencies, The Excellency of Theology Compared with Natural Philosophy and About The Excellency and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis, he explains and justifies his new philosophy of science while reconciling it with Christian theology. These pioneering works of early science and theology are now available in a modernized and accessible new edition. (...) This Broadview edition brings spelling and punctuation into line with current conventions and includes notes and references to set the works in their historical and philosophical context. The appendices include works by Boyle's predecessors in the philosophy of science, other philosophical writings by Boyle, and an appendix of the other figures mentioned in the texts. (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

The paper raises the question of the function of visual representations in medieval cosmographical texts. It proposes to view diverse functions of figures in relation to changing discursive environments, including differing philosophical positions and changing social and intellectual contexts. It further suggests a distinction between figures that were elaborated within the highly specialized disciplines of mathematics and philosophy of nature in Greek Antiquity and figures that were instrumental in transmitting accepted world models, thus avoiding the opposition between scientific and unscientific (...) types of verbal and pictorial documents. Simplifying changes, when figures are abstracted form their geometrical context and accompany doxographical, descriptive accounts, are characterized in terms of schematization. Concomitantly, mathematical and philosophical demonstrations tend to give way to proofs of a predominantly rhetorical nature: images are verbally construed and, in order to enhance these, actual visual figures— mostly linear, diagrammatic constructs—are added. With regard to the Middle Ages, the paper distinguishes two principal periods: the period from the seventh to the eleventh century and the period of the so-called twelfth-century Renaissance. First, the verbal and pictorial cosmological corpus of Roman origin gave rise to explanations and variations but not to consequential theoretical developments and cosmological diagrams tended to fuse with summarizing tables at this time. Then, during the twelfth century, mathematical and philosophical documents of a specialized kind that were translated from the Arabic and also from the Greek became available in the Latin West. In mathematics, specialized types of study remained, however, sparse. Continuous elaborations of the assimilated material set in later only, within the thirteenth-century university context. Nevertheless, twelfth-century authors of cosmographical accounts became increasingly aware that their expositions and visual figures were ultimately derived from geometrical models of the universe. More diversified types of demonstration and corresponding visual figures were being used, as exemplified by William of Conches’ Dragmaticon philosophiae. (shrink)

Robert Boyle, one of the most important intellectuals of the seventeenth century, was a gifted experimenter, an exceptionally able philosopher, and a dedicated Christian. In Boyle’s two _Excellencies_, _The Excellency of Theology Compared with Natural Philosophy_ and _About The Excellency and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis_, he explains and justifies his new philosophy of science while reconciling it with Christian theology. These pioneering works of early science and theology are now available in a modernized and accessible new edition. (...) This Broadview edition brings spelling and punctuation into line with current conventions and includes notes and references to set the works in their historical and philosophical context. The appendices include works by Boyle’s predecessors in the philosophy of science, other philosophical writings by Boyle, and an appendix of the other figures mentioned in the texts. (shrink)

This volume brings together the studies by the late Gabriel Nuchelmans (1922-96) on the history of logic and semantics from the 12th to the 17th century. They exemplify his conviction that the study of problems of modern analytical philosophy can help in understanding the authors of earlier centuries - and that the study of earlier solutions can stimulate modern discussions. The first articles deal with medieval theories of the proposition and predication; the final section is concerned with (...) class='Hi'>Renaissance philosophy, from Lorenzo Valla to Locke. (shrink)

This chapter uncovers a less investigated aspect of the relationship between the two most important scholastic schools of the Renaissance, Thomism and Scotism: the influence of Scotist literature on distinctions as seen in some sixteenth-century Thomists. The chapter has a primary focus on Chrysostomus Javelli’s engagement in his discussion of divine attributes with the Scotist doctrine of distinctions, but also considers other Thomist sources. First, the beginnings of the highly specialised Scotist literature on distinctions are traced back to (...) the start of the fourteenth century; I show how some early followers of Duns Scotus, in particular Francis of Meyronnes and Petrus Thomae, systematised Scotus’ ontology of the various grades of being by compiling lists of subtle distinctions to be applied to various levels of reality. I give some indications as to the later reception of these models of distinctions in the Scotist school. Special attention is paid to Étienne Brulefer, since his summary of Petrus Thomae’s model of seven distinctions was Javelli’s source for the Scotist doctrine. I then investigate how Javelli worked with Brulefer’s summary, and how he sought to integrate the Scotist doctrine into his own discussion of divine attributes. Thomists traditionally allowed only a rational or mental kind of distinction among divine attributes, and between them and the divine essence. Javelli, however, endeavours to show how the Thomist position may be reconciled with the Scotist doctrine of a formal or ex natura rei distinction. He did not always endorse this conciliatory approach; I hypothesise that he changed his mind on the subject over time. Finally, I show how other Renaissance Thomists reacted to the Scotist system of distinctions; in particular, I draw attention to the Thomists Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Bartolomeo Manzoli, and Mattia Gibboni da Aquario, who all wrote treatises on Thomist distinction theory modelled on the Scotist system of distinctions. In some of this literature, lists of distinctions based on Thomist metaphysics were compiled in order to replace the Scotist system. I argue that Javelli’s approach is more conciliatory and, in fact, has some overlap with the concordist thought of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who himself considered Scotus and Aquinas to be in fundamental agreement as regards the distinction between divine attributes. (shrink)

The Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 4 covers a period of three hundred and fifty years, from the middle of the fourteenth century to the early years of the eighteenth century and the birth of modern philosophy. The focus of this volume is on Renaissance philosophy and seventeenth-century rationalism, particularly that of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Science was ascendant during the Renaissance and beyond, and the Copernican revolution represented the philosophical climax of the middle (...) ages. This volume is unique in its emphasis on the relationship between science and philosophy. Placing the philosophy of the age into its scientific, social and cultural context, it examines the scholastic thought which Renaissance philosophy both interacted with and reacted against. A grasp of the intellectual context of the rationalists is also critical to an understanding of this philosophical movement, and the writings of Bacon, Gassendi, Hobbes, and others are analyzed here. The Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 4 provides a broad, scholarly introduction to this period for students of philosophy and related disciplines, as well as some original interpretations of these authors. It will be important reading both for the specialist and the general reader. It includes a glossary of over one hundred technical terms and a chronological table of philosophical, scientific, and other cultural events. (shrink)

1. Introduction: 1.1 Difficulties of Approach; 1.2 Philosophical Background. 2. The Context of Early Modern Theories of the Passions: 2.1 Changing Vocabulary; 2.2 Taxonomies; 2.3 Philosophical Issues in Theories of the Emotions. SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTS: Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Theories of the Emotions; Descartes; Hobbes; Malebranche; Spinoza; Shaftsbury; Hutcheson; Hume.

In this paper we examine titles of early modern German dissertations with regard to their ‘interdiscplinarity’, challenging the established consensus that interdisciplinarity evolved only in the 18th century. Based on the construction and analysis of a co-occurrence network of 909 dissertation titles published in the 17thc entury it can be shown that various dimensions of early modern interdisciplinarity should be distinguished. This concerns dissertations that connect philosophical disciplines to the ‘higher’ faculties of the early modern university (...) (theology, jurisprudence, medicine) as well as titles that connect theoretical and practical subdisciplines of philosophy itself. We also observe that the emerging disciplines of historiography and philology seem to play a prominent role in the emergence of early modern interdisciplinarity. On a structural level it seems to be misguided to construe the early modern system of knowledge as a ‘tree’. It rather seems that relations betweeen disciplines in this period exhibit both tree-like and lattice-like features. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts, this being the first one. The second is entitled ‘Historical and Epistemological Reflections on the Culture of Machines around Renaissance: Machines, Machineries and Perpetual Motion’ and will be published in Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum in 2015. Based on our recent studies, we provide here a historical and epistemological feature on the role played by machines and machineries. Ours is an epistemological thesis based on a series of historical examples to show (...) that the relations between theoretical science and the construction of machines cannot be taken for granted, a priori. Our analysis is mainly based on the culture of machines around 15th and 17th centuries, namely the epoch of Late Renaissance and Early Modern Age. For this is the period of scientific revolution and this age offers abundant interesting material for researches into the relations of theoretical science/construction of machines as well. However, to prove our epistemological thesis, we will also exploit examples of machines built in other historical periods. Particularly, a discussion concerning the relationship between science theory and the development of science art crafts produced by non-recognized scientists in a certain historical time is presented. The main questions are: when and why did the tension between science give rise to a new scientific approach to applied discipline such as studies on machines and machineries? What kind of science was used for projecting machines and machineries? Was science at the time a necessary precondition to build a machine? In the first part we will focus on the difference between Aristotelian-Euclidean and Archimedean approaches and we will outline the heritage of these two different approaches in late medieval and Renaissance science. In the second part, we will apply our reconstructions to some historical and epistemological problems concerning the relations of science/technology/constructions of machines. The problem of perpetual motion will play an important role in this context. (shrink)

This dataset documents results and code for the paper "Interdisciplinarity in the 17th Century? A Co-Occurrence Analysis of Early Modern German Dissertation Titles" by Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter, forthcoming in *Synthese*. The data to be processed are contained in four files, derived from a larger dataset related to German dissertations and sourced from the national bibliography of 17th century German prints *VD 17* that will be released at a later date. More information can be found in the (...) file `README.md`. (shrink)

Studies the Renaissance and the 17th century in two ways. The first four essays turn on problems of metaphor and style while the second group are about Machiavelli and Machiavellism and Andrew Maxwell.

© Mind Association 2018Some time ago I was at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris investigating the teaching of philosophy during Descartes’ time. Fine monographs had already been published on the various regimens and practices at Descartes’ college at La Flèche, and Jesuit institutions in general, as well as the collegiate curriculum in seventeenth-century France. But as interested as I was in the form of the teaching—how philosophy was taught, where, and when—I was more interested in its content—what was actually (...) taught. A fair number of early modern textbooks and some manuscripts of lectures and student notebooks were still available; beyond that, one could find reports of weekly or monthly disputations, condemnations of specific doctrines, various broadsheets, manifestos, and student theses and dissertations. After overcoming some administrative resistance, I found myself in a room at the Cabinet d’Estampes looking at a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:86 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY lamblichi Chalcidensis ex Coele-Syria de vita Pythagorica liber, lamblichos, Pythagoras. Legende--Lehre---Lebensgestaltung. Griechisch und Deutsch, herausgegeben, iibersetzt und eingeleitet von Michael yon Albrecht. (Ziirich & Stuttgart: Artemis, 1963. Pp. 280. = Die Bibliothek der Alten Welt, Reihe Antike und Christentum.) The present edition and translation again makes available one of the texts most valuable for the understanding of the world of late antiquity. The earlier editions, (...) especially that of L. Deubner (1937), are out of print. The fact that this document has been translated into German for the first time is also very helpful, since Iamblichos is sometimes difficult to understand. A brief but nevertheless informative introduction rightly emphasizes that Iamblichos intended to present an introduction and initiation into the Pythagorean way of life rather than a biography of Pythagoras based upon historically trustworthy materials. Although the biography of Pythagoras is certainly a part of the book, it serves only as the ideal example of the Pythagorean way of life, as Iaznblichos sees it. However, more than merely a work of Iamblichos, it ought to be recognized as a "fundamental document of the image of man in later antiquity" (p. 11). The text is based upon L. Deubner's edition, but occasionally it takes up older conjectures or returns to the tradition (for a more detailed discussion cf. W. Burkert, Gnomon 37, 1965, 24ff.). The index and the explanatory notes are also helpful, although the latter prove to be too brief and do not adequately call the reader's attention to the problems of sources, tradition, and composition. One can only agree with von Albrecht that we still need a modem commentary (p. I1). H. D. BETZ Claremont, CaliIornia Agrippa and the Crisis o] Renaissance Thought. By Charles G. Nauert, Jr. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965. Pp. vi W 374. $8.00.) One of the most influential and widely read thinkers of the early sixteenth century was the German Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettisheim (1486-1535). His many works were reprinted often, as well as being translated into several vernacular languages. The De incertitudine et vanitate omnium scientiarum et atrium of 1526, for example, went through at least 16 printings before 1700 and appeared in Italian (1547), English (1569), French (1582), and Dutch (1651) translations, which were themselves often reprinted. Although interest in Agrippa has waned somewhat since the seventeenth century, there is still a significant amount of scholarly debate regarding his importance and the meaning of his writings. Professor Nauert's monograph is the fruit of many years' study of Agrippa's life, thought, and milieu. In it he clearly places Agrippa in his historical context, accurately sketching his background and influence. After a brief introduction (pp. 1-7), the study is essentially divided into two parts: The first (pp. 8-115) traces Agrippa's life and intellectual development, the second (pp. 116-334) discusses in some detail a number of the key themes developed in his writings. There is also a substantial bibliography (pp. 335-,355) and a quite complete and accurate index (pp. 357-374). Although the mass of material which Nanert brings to our attention indicates the opposite, one sometimes gets the impression that the author tends to underestimate the importance of his subject. For example, he says, "Agrippa von Nettisheim is now a forgotten figure in the intellectual history of the West" (p. 322), but this does not seem to be the case. Although much work remains to be done, at least five books have been devoted to Agrippa in the past half century and, indeed, at least seven articles have appeared in the past ten years on one or another aspect of his life and thought. The very fact that Nanert can argue with so much vigor against the views of contemporary scholars like Lynn Thomdike and Paola Zambelli indicates that it is anything but a dead issue. As it is, Nauert's book clearly and accurately describes Agrippa's place in the intellectual ambiance of the sixteenth century. It gives the first detailed analysis of Agrippa's life and thought in English in recent BOOK REVIEWS 87 times and is the first full*scale attempt to exhaustively treat... (shrink)

When does Renaissance philosophy end, and Early Modern philosophy begin? Do Renaissance philosophers have something in common, which distinguishes them from Early Modern philosophers? And ultimately, what defines the modernity of the Early Modern period, and what role did the Renaissance play in shaping it? The answers to these questions are not just chronological. This book challenges traditional constructions of these periods, which partly reflect the prejudice that the Renaissance was a literary and (...) artistic phenomenon, rather than a philosophical phase. The essays in this book investigate how the legacy of Renaissance philosophers persisted in the following centuries through the direct encounters of subsequent generations with Renaissance philosophical texts. This volume treats Early Modern philosophers as joining their predecessors as ‘conversation partners’: the ‘conversations’ in this book feature, among others, Girolamo Cardano and Henry More, Thomas Hobbes and Lorenzo Valla, Bernardino Telesio and Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Tommaso Campanella, Giulio Cesare Vanini and the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus. (shrink)

This translation of a classic and original work of intellectual history is beautifully done. Rossi’s book Clavis Universalis was first published in Italian in 1960, but Clucas translates the second, revised edition of 1983. The book is about Renaissance and 17th-century encyclopedism, hieroglyphics and cryptography, the techniques of artificial memory, the history of rhetoric, changes in views about logic and method in the scientific revolution, and new ideas about how language and images might reflect or capture reality. (...) Frances Yates’s brilliant The Art of Memory, published in 1966, has so far had much more influence in the English-speaking world. Despite warm citations and many points of contact with Yates’s work, Rossi is less interested in uncovering hidden occult traditions, and more focussed on the way major 17th-century thinkers’ work must be understood against the rich background of schemes for universal grammar and local memory. He shows that scholars working on Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz miss key references to this intellectual heritage. Half of the book [152] introduces relevant mnemonic, rhetorical, linguistic, medical, and occult writings. Rossi includes illuminating discussions not only of Ramon Lull, Petrus Ramus, Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, and all, but also of fascinating minor writers like Guglielmo Gratorolo who systematized advice on medical aids to memory in the mid-16th century, and the wonderful Johannes Spangerbergius, who classified various forms of amnesia in 1570. He then argues that polemic against the arts of memory in both Bacon and Descartes coexisted with intense interest on their part in the supplementing of weak powers of natural memory by various artificial aids and objects outside the boundaries of skull and skin. Rossi tells the strange stories of the great 17th-century encyclopedists and universal language schemers—Alsted, Comenius, Wilkins, Dalgarno—making important connections between Wilkins’s scheme and worries about methods for botanical classification in the early Royal Society. The final chapter is a tour de force on ‘the sources of Leibniz’s universal character’, placing him (as Clucas neatly puts it) ‘at the “end” of a Renaissance intellectual tradition rather than reading him “forwards” as an innovative precursor of modern formal logic’. Historians of science, linguistics, and philosophy have built on many aspects of Rossi’s work since 1983, and Clucas contributes an outstanding introduction which summarizes key strands of recent scholarship. (shrink)

Difficulties with periodization are often symptoms of internal diseases affecting the history of philosophy. Renaissance scholars and historians of early modern philosophy represent two scholarly communities that do not communicate with each other, as if an abrupt change of scenery had taken place from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, from the age of Campanella to the age of Descartes. The assumption of an arbitrary division between these two periods continues to have unfortunate effects on the study (...) of the history of philosophy. This chapter provides a diagnosis of this problem by looking at the way in which periodization crystallized in the history of philosophy. It then lays a foundation for attempting a new approach to this issue, which consists in mapping direct connections and conceptual links of seventeenth-century philosophers with the philosophies of the Renaissance. We intend to shift the weight from the problem of assessing the ‘modernity’ of Renaissance philosophers to the creation of a space of interaction between Renaissance and early modern thinkers in the spirit of ‘conversation’, with special attention to tracing sources, direct allusions, confutations and continuities. (shrink)

While it is generally accepted that texts concerning navigation written by the Portuguese mathematician and cosmographer Pedro Nunes (1502–1578) were influential in erudite circles of Europe, less is known about the real impact and diffusion of his work among the less educated, such as professionals associated with sea voyages. Did Nunes' theoretical contributions reach the relevant artisans and practitioners? If so, how did this come about?This paper uses the case of Pedro Nunes to investigate how complex theoretical ideas were transmitted (...) to artisans in early modern Europe. It begins by examining the ways in which Nunes managed to interface with practitioners while working as a cosmographer. Second, it focuses on how his ideas, techniques, and results were used and transmitted by other agents, such as fellow cosmographers, navigation teachers, or mathematical practitioners. This paper concentrates on the transmission of such knowledge through vernacular texts – mainly navigation manuals and class notes – produced in the Iberian Peninsula and England in the 16th and 17th centuries. It shows how these agents facilitated the convergence between two distinct intellectual worlds – those of scholars and those of artisans – by rendering highly mathematical subjects more accessible to practitioners. (shrink)

Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno was a notable supporter of the new science which arose during his lifetime; his own role has been debated since the early 17th century. This work re-evaluates his contribution to the scientific revolution, emphasizing his links with the magnetic philosophers.

This volume offers an important re-evaluation of early modern philosophy. It takes issue with the received notion of a 'revolution' in philosophical thought in the 17th-century, making the case for treating the 16th and 17th centuries together. Taking up Charles Schmitt's formulation of the many 'Aristotelianisms' of the period, the papers bring out the variety and richness of the approaches to Aristotle, rather than treating his as a homogeneous system of thought. Based on much new research, (...) they provide case studies of how philosophers used, developed, and reacted to the framework of Aristotelian logic, categories and distinctions, and demonstrate that Aristotelianism possessed both the flexibility and the dynamism to exert a continuing impact - even among such noted 'anti-Aristotelians' as Descartes and Hobbes. This constant engagement can indeed be termed 'conversations with Aristotle'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 (2002) 545-546 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th Century Scotland Michael Hunter, editor. The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th Century Scotland. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2001. Pp. vii + 247. Cloth, $90.00. This is a superb collection of original materials (including a (...) range of private correspondence, scribal works, and printed texts) related to the "strange reports" of incidence of "second sight" in Scotland from the 1680s to the 1700s. The material includes literary exchanges between powerful figures in the Anglo-Scottish intellectual community like Robert Boyle, John Aubrey, Robert Kirk, John Frazer, and Samuel Pepys. All of these texts are edited with immaculate care and informative annotation. The lengthy introduction provides both intellectual context and a detailed bibliographical account. Collectively the texts reproduced here provide a comprehensive resource for the examination of attitudes to magic and the supernatural in the late seventeenth century. From these texts one can reconstruct the battle between "orthodox" Anglican defenders of a "spirit world" and the sceptical assault on its authenticity. This was a war of ideas with the victors hoping to fix the meaning and nature of second sight as either supportive or corrosive of the established ecclesiastical institutions. Was this phenomena an established "matter of fact" which proved the routines of nature and also the paranormal intervention of God? Or was it, as some sceptics argued, evidence of priestly fraud and manipulation? The debates over the meaning and significance of these transgressions of the ordinary course of nature vacillated between treating them as acts of God or the Devil, as manifest frauds or ignorant misunderstandings. As Michael Hunter argues in his introduction, men like Boyle focussed upon the issue of second sight because it was a less exotic and less controversial phenomenon than the more culturally unstable manifestations of witchcraft. Fundamental to the orthodox cultural project was the creation of an empirically robust form of knowledge that combined folklore, antiquarian erudition, and biblical exegesis to establish the reality and boundaries of the natural and the divine.Although Hunter establishes the "origins" of the interest as an intellectual spin off from Boyle's project for the "Protestantisation" of the Highlands, the core text reproduced here is Robert Kirk's The Secret Commonwealth. Kirk, educated in Edinburgh and St. Andrews, was minister of Aberfoyle and worked with Boyle on his Gaelic Bible after 1684. This scriptural labor brought him to London in the late 1680s and into an elite Anglican circle that included Edward Stillingfleet. The text edited here is based on the earliest surviving manuscript of the early 1690s which was compiled from earlier notes. It is clear that the work was circulated in the period only in scribal form: a partial version was first printed in 1815 and a complete text in 1964. As Hunter establishes by examining Kirk's overlooked student notebooks from the 1660s and 1670s, it is possible to reconstruct the eclectic intellectual culture that formed the background to the work—here Aristotelian texts mingled with more modern authors like Campanella and Descartes. These notebooks not only record Kirk's pastoral concerns and the spiritual health of his flock, they also register a range of more exotic interests in folkish charms and the various operations and manifestations of the "invisible powers." The discovery of a "kingdom of fairies," which was apparently comprehensible to certain individuals with second sight, was ideal material upon which Kirk was able to synchronize the findings of Holy Scripture and modern natural philosophy.As Hunter's elegant and effective introduction outlines, men like Kirk, Frazer, and later Martin Martin, deliberately mimicking the epistemological strategies of the London-based Royal Society, aimed to display matters of fact as a dispassionate means of responding to the cultural assault of the sceptical wits who dismissed stories of the "lychnobious" world as [End Page 545] idle fantasy or deliberate fraud. Although this work was learned, serious, and erudite, and in the... (shrink)

Nobilitas is a study of the history of aristocratic philosophy from ancient Greece to the early twentieth century that aims at providing an alternative to the liberal democratic norms, which are propagated today as the only viable socio-political system for the world community. Jacob reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the social and cultural development of European civilization has, for twenty-five centuries, been based not on democratic or communist notions but, rather on aristocratic and nationalist notions. Beginning with (...) the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and continuing through Renaissance and Baroque aristocratic philosophers, the German Idealists, and English and Italian nationalists, the study ends with the transformation of aristocratic philosophy in nineteenth century Germany into racist elitism. As such, the study includes a survey of the philosophical bases of racism and anti-Semitism. These topics have been systematically excluded from academic and political debate since the end of the last Great War. This study is a pioneering work in understanding and changing political ideologies. (shrink)

'the oldest biography of Spinoza', La Vie de Mr. Spinosa, which in the manuscript copies is often followed by L'Esprit de M. Spinosa. Margaret Jacob, in her Radical Enlightenment, contended that the Traite was written by a radical group of Freemasons in The Hague in the early eighteenth century. Silvia Berti has offered evidence it was written by Jan Vroesen. Various discussions in the early eighteenth century consider many possi ble authors from the Renaissance onwards (...) to whom the work might be attributed. The Trois imposteurs has attracted quite a bit of recent attention as one of the most significant irreligious clandestine writings available in the Enlightenment, which is most important for understanding the develop ment of religious scepticism, radical deism, and even atheism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars for the last couple of decades have been trying to assess when the work was actually written or compiled and by whom. In view of the widespread distribution of manu scripts of the work all over Europe, they have also been seeking to find out who was influenced by the work, and what it represented for its time. Hitherto unknown manuscripts are being turned up in public and private libraries all over Europe and the United States. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of 17th Century Philosophy offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative overview of early-modern philosophy written by an international team of specialists. As with previous Cambridge histories of philosophy the subject is treated by topic and theme, and since history does not come packaged in neat bundles, the subject is also treated with great temporal flexibility, incorporating frequent reference to medieval and Renaissance ideas. The basic structure of the volumes corresponds to the way an (...) educated seventeenth - century European might have organized the domain of philosophy. Thus, the history of science, religious doctrine, and politics feature very prominently. The narrative that unfolds begins with an intellectual world dominated by a synthesis of Aristotelianism and scholastic philosophy, but by the end of the period the mechanistic or "corpuscularian" philosophy has emerged and exerted its full impact on traditional metaphysics, ethics, theology, logic, and epistemology. (shrink)

In this work we survey reports on selected severe storms of the 17th century. Specifically, we investigate a severe storm which was accompanied by a ball lightning phenomenon in Cornwall (UK) in 1640. The “fiery Ball”, which reportedly made a “ter[r]ible sound”, entered the church, broke stones and smashed windows. It made holes in stone walls and injured about 14 people. Furthermore, we report on a 1672 storm in Bedford (UK) that tore down houses, blew down stone walls (...) and uprooted trees. We also examine two severe thunderstorms that tore off roofs and uprooted trees in Oxfordshire (UK) and Blois (F) in 1680. In Oxfordshire, hailstone killed farm animals, and later lightning caused a fire, which damaged houses and burned down barns. In Blois, houses were torn down by the wind, eight parishes were ruined by hail (hailstone were the size of a “man’s fist”). Furthermore, houses were damaged and glass windows were shattered. Based on various primary sources, we discuss the impact of these severe storms on society. Moreover, we briefly discuss how people perceived atmospheric phenomena like storms, tornadoes, and hail. Finally, we discuss selected key issues of investigating historical severe storms. (shrink)

Legal and political theorist, common lawyer and parliamentary leader, historian and polyglot, John Selden was a formidable figure in Renaissance England, whose real importance and influence are now being recognized once again. John Selden and the Western Political Tradition highlights his important role in the development of such early modern political ideas as modern natural law and natural rights, national identity and tradition, the political integration of church and state, and the effect of Jewish ideas on Western political (...) thought. Selden's political ideas are analysed in the context of his contemporaries Grotius, Hobbes and Filmer. The book demonstrates how these ideas informed and influenced more familiar works of later thinkers like Burke. (shrink)

In this volume leading contemporary philosophical historians of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods examine the works of important figures of the fifteenth through the eighteenth century. While Midwest Studies in Philosophy has produced other volumes devoted to historical periods in philosophy, this is the first to offer such extensive and focused original materials on specific crucial figures as this volume. Original papers by twenty contemporary philosophers writing about the works of the major philosophers of the Fifteenth (...) through the Eighteenth centuries This historically and philosophically broad collection extends from such fifteenth century figures as Ficino, Machiavelli, and Pompanazzi to the work of Montesquieu in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

The Companion Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive work to cover all the principal lines and themes of the history and philosophy of mathematics from ancient times up to the twentieth century. In 176 articles contributed by 160 authors of 18 nationalities, the work describes and analyzes the variety of theories, proofs, techniques, and cultural and practical applications of mathematics. The work's aim is to recover our mathematical heritage and show the importance of mathematics today by treating its interactions with (...) the related disciplines of physics, astronomy, engineering and philosophy. It also covers the history of higher education in mathematics and the growth of institutions and organizations connected with the development of the subject. Part 1 deals with mathematics in various ancient and non-Western cultures from antiquity up to medieval and Renaissance times. Part 2 treats developments in all the main areas of mathematics during the medieval and Renaissance periods up to and including the early 17th century. Parts 3-10 are divided into the main branches into which mathematics developed from the early 17th century onwards: calculus and mathematical analysis, logic and foundations, algebras, geometries, mechanics, mathematical physics and engineering, and probability and statistics. Parts 11-13 review the history of mathematics from an international perspective. The teaching of mathematics in higher education is examined in various countries, and mathematics in culture, art and society is covered. The Companion Encyclopedia features annotated bibliographies of both classic and contemporary sources; black and white illustrations, line figures and equations; biographies of major mathematicians and historians and philosophers of mathematics; a chronological table of main events in the developments of mathematics; and a fully integrated index of people, events and topics. (shrink)

The paper studies the vocabulary the Ukrainian intellectuals of the second half of the 16th–the early 17th century used to signify a number of moral, ethical, and legal concepts. The first part of the article examines legal documents, including the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and several court documents. The author comes to the following conclusions: the lexeme “justice” is consistently used in legal documents written in Old Ukrainian to denote practices related to litigation and (...) acquires clear features of a legal concept which corresponds to the Latin iustitio; the study of the aforementioned texts shows that the semantic field of the lexeme “justice” does not include any reference to moral and ethical norms and principles which is customary in modern language. Instead, semantic fields of both old and modern concepts of “justice” intersect in the fact that now, like in the early modern times, it means impartial attitude towards someone and a set of actions that comply with legal norms; the lexemes “fairly/justly”, “truly”, and “true” have rather vague semantic fields that often overlap, while the adverbs “fairly/justly” and “truly” often function as synonyms; the use of lexemes “fairly/justly”, “truly”, and “true” is neither consistent nor structured. They belong to the sphere of everyday speech and cannot claim to belong to the conceptual apparatus; the lexemes “truth”, “righteousness”, and “verity” are almost never used in the legal domain of that time. Although the field of jurisprudence included the concepts that were very important for the communicational sphere in early modern Ukrainian society, it could not cover all its needs. (shrink)

This article has three main goals. Firstly, it intends to present the interesting but little-studied intellectual figure of Sir Francis Kynaston , his educational enterprises, and his contributions to 17th-century English culture. Secondly, it aims to illustrate in detail his often neglected or, at best, misunderstood political ideas and connect them to the type of debates and controversies he was involved in at the end of the 1620s. In doing so, one of the principal objectives will be to (...) revisit the traditional scholarly interpretations of Kynaston's place within the history of political thought in early modern England. In particular, attention will be paid to the language Kynaston employed to attack a specific political paradigm, that is parliamentarian “patriotism”. Finally, the essay will endeavour to show the interplay between Kynaston's educational project and cultural ideals, on one side, and his absolutist political doctrines and goals, on the other. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. (...) LoLordo's work will be essential reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science. (shrink)

Since the Renaissance, dramatic theory has been strongly influenced, sometimes even dominated by Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle’s concept of tragedy has been perceived as both a descriptive and a normative concept: a description of a practice as it should be continued. This biased reading of ancient theory is not exceptional, but in the case of Aristotle’s Poetics, a particular question can be raised. Aristotle has written about tragedy, at a moment that tragedy had no meaningful political or civic function anymore. (...) As political theory—e.g. as developed in the Politics and the Art of Rhetoric—should contain the risks of transgression in political practice, so poetic theory can contain the risks of the representation of transgressions in poetic practices such as the performance of tragedy. Apart from an account on Aristotle’s Poetics as a integral part of his ethical and political theory, this article argues the (mis)readings of Aristotelian dramatic theory since the Renaissance, and especially in 17th century France are not coincidental. Aristotle’s theory itself fits neatly into a political-theoretical framework or, if one puts it more brutally, an ideology. The particular theatricality of French absolutism took clearly its advantage from this ideological (mis)readings of Aristotle. (shrink)

According to a grand narrative that long ago ceased to be told, there was a seventeenth century Scientific Revolution, during which a few heroes conquered nature thanks to mathematics. When this grand narrative was brought into question, our perspectives on the question of mathematization should have changed. It seems, however, that they were instead set aside, both because of a general distrust towards sweeping narratives that are always subject to the suspicion that they overlook the unyielding complexity of real (...) history, and because of a shift in our interests. The more obscure and idiosyncratic they are, an alchemist, a patron of the sciences or a lunatic collector is nowadays honored in journals of the history of sciences. As for the general issues involved in the question of mathematization, they are rejected as obsolete, or reserved for specialized journals in the history of mathematics. The article « Forms of mathematization » examines in general the notion of mathematization, distinguishes different forms of mathematization and defends a renewed study of the forms of mathematization in the history of the early sciences. (shrink)