Andrea Cesalpino And Renaissance Aristotelianism

Shedding new light on the understudied Italian Renaissance scholar, Andrea Cesalpino, and the diverse fields he wrote on, this volume covers the multiple traditions that characterize his complex natural philosophy and medical theories, taking in epistemology, demonology, mineralogy, and botany. By moving beyond the established influence of Aristotle's texts on his work, Andrea Cesalpino and Renaissance Aristotelianism reflects the rich influences of Platonism, alchemy, Galenism, and Hippocratic ideas. Cesalpino's relation to the new sciences of the 16th century are traced through his direct influences, on cosmology, botany, and medicine. In combining Cesalpino's reception of these traditions alongside his connections to early modern science, this book provides a vital case study of Renaissance Aristotelianism.

In 1583 the Italian botanist and physician Andrea Cesalpino (1524–1603) published De Plantis Libri XVI, made of 16 books (libri), considered to be the first treatise where botany is treated independently from medicine. In so doing, he broke with a long tradition inherited in Western science from Antiquity and perpetuated during the Middle Age through the early Renaissance. De Plantis lays the foundations of scientific systematics through a new focus on plant morphology and natural similarities and became a milestone in the history of Western botany. It is a precious testimony to the evolution of botanical and physiological knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and illustrates the role of Aristotelian philosophy in 16th-century knowledge. The volume includes an introductory essay about Cesalpino's philosophy and botany, a critical edition of the Latin text, a translation, a commentary, and indexes. It should interest scholars in Renaissance studies, historians, and philosophers of science and medicine, as well as botanists and plant scientists curious about the history of plant sciences.

The purpose of this book is to integrate the fact of biological evolution (which, as such, should not be confused with the evolutionary theories and ideologies supposedly based on that fact) with the principles and contents of Thomistic philosophy. After identifying the main difficulties involved in this endeavor—and how they have been addressed by other authors within the Thomistic tradition—we present our own thesis. We begin by arguing that the diversity of species and varieties of corporeal living beings is consistent with Aquinas’ thought. Next, we distinguish between two forms of evolution, namely, intraspecific and transspecific; following the central tenets of Aquinas’ philosophy, the ontological significance and causalities involved in both types of evolution are analyzed. We complete this exposition by offering a general overview of evolutionary history in light of the criteria presented, with emphasis on anthropogenesis. Juan Eduardo Carreño Pavez (1976) holds a PhD in Medical Sciences and a PhD in Philosophy. After completing a postdoc at the Center for Medieval Philosophy, Georgetown University, he returned to the University of los Andes, Chile, where he has a position as Associate Professor. His research has focused on Thomas Aquinas’ thought, mediaeval philosophy, and the dialogue between theology, philosophy and science. He is the author of several articles and monographs, including Vivere viventibus est esse: la vida como perfección del ser en la obra de Tomás de Aquino (Eunsa, 2020), and Una reconsideración del estatus de la mente animal y humana (Ril Editores, 2024).

Danilo Facca investigates the contribution of Aristotelianism in the emergence of a system of philosophical disciplines for schools and universities in the late Renaissance and Early Modern age. Facca charts the intellectual context of this process, focusing on the interpretation of Aristotelianism at renowned German, Italian and Polish centres of study including Milan, Padua, Altdorf, Helmstedt, Torun and Gdansk, at a time when the authority of the Aristotelian tradition was under direct threat from the dissemination of Peter Ramus' thought. Each chapter assesses engagement with and criticism of ideas from Aristotelian theoretical and practical philosophy. They bring together the writings of major figures, including Peter Ramus and Bartholomäus Keckermann, and lesser-known academics who have not received sufficient recognition in existing literature, such as Ottaviano Ferrari, Philipp Scherb, Ernst Soner and Franz Tidike. By discussing the relationship of these academics with the Aristotelian legacy, this book reveals how innovative ideas that emerged during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries were actually formed through the reworking, and even distortion of concepts originally derived from Aristotle.

This book explores René Descartes’s attempts to describe particular bodies, such as rocks, minerals, metals, plants, and animals, within the mechanistic interpretation of nature of his philosophical program. Despite his early rationalistic epistemology, Descartes’s increasing attention to collections, histories, lists of qualities, and particular bodies results in a puzzling ‘short history of all natural phenomena’ contained in the Principles of philosophy (1644). The present book outlines the role of Descartes's observations and experimentation as he aimed to construct a universal science of nature, ultimately revealing the mechanization of nature in detail, and for curious bodies such as the Bologna Stone or the sensitive herb. What results is a theoretical natural history consistent with the mechanical principles of his philosophy, ultimately shedding new light on his attempt to produce a complete philosophy of nature.

In the pre-modern times, while medicine was still relying on classical authorities on herbal remedies, a new engagement with the plant world emerged. This volume follows intertwined strands in the study of plants, examining newly introduced species that captured physicians' curiosity, expanded their therapeutic arsenal, and challenged their long-held medical theories. The development of herbaria, the creation of botanical gardens, and the inspection of plants contributed to a new understanding of the vegetal world. Increased attention to plants led to account for their therapeutic virtues, to test and produce new drugs, to recognize the physical properties of plants, and to develop a new plant science and medicine.

This book is a treasure house of Italian philosophy. Narrating and explaining the history of Italian philosophers from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, the author identifies the specificity, peculiarity, originality, and novelty of Italian philosophical thought in the men and women of the Renaissance. The vast intellectual output of the Renaissance can be traced back to a single philosophical stream beginning in Florence and fed by numerous converging human factors. This work offers historians and philosophers a vast survey and penetrating analysis of an intellectual tradition which has heretofore remained virtually unknown to the Anglophonic world of scholarship.