Julius Caesar Scaliger and Sixteenth-Century Natural Philosophy Radboud University, Nijmegen, 26/27 June 2015 Organized by Kuni

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Julius Caesar Scaliger and Sixteenth-Century Natural Philosophy Radboud University, Nijmegen, 26/27 June 2015 Organized by Kuni Sakamoto and Christoph Lüthy Day 1, Friday, June 26 Erasmusplein1, Room 15.39/41 09.00 - 09.15 Welcome 09.15 - 09.30 Introduction 09.30-10.15 Ian Maclean (All Souls College, Oxford): The Scaliger-Cardano Debate Revisited 10.15-11.00 John Henry (University of Edinburgh): “The Element of Fire is Quite Put Out ...”: Girolamo Cardano’s Exclusion of Fire from the Elements, and Contemporary Responses 11.00-11.30 Coffee break 11.30-12.15 Guido Giglioni (The Warburg Institute, London): Who’s the Real Averroist Here? Cardano and Scaliger on Radical Aristotelianism 12.15 - 13.45 Lunch break 13.45-14.30 José Manuel García Valverde (University of Seville): Cardano vs. Scaliger on the Conception of God and the Relation between Him and His Creation 14.30-15.15 Kuni Sakamoto (Radboud University): Anti-Naturalism and the “Religion of Form” in Julius Caesar Scaliger 15.15 - 15.45 Coffee break 15.45-16.30 Stefano Perfetti (University of Pisa): Julius Caesar Scaliger on Aristotle’s Animals and Theophrastus’ Plants Day 2, Saturday, June 27 Faculty Club Huize Heyendael Geert Grooteplein-Noord 9, 6525 EZ 9.30-10.15 Leen Spruit (Università di Roma “La Sapienza”): Roman Censorship of Cardano and Scaliger 10.15-11.00 Simone De Angelis (University of Graz): The Reception of J.C. Scaliger in Germany: Rudolph Goclenius’ Adversaria ad exotericas exercitationes 11.00-11.30 Coffee break 11.30-12.15 Andreas Blank (University of Paderborn): Antonio Ponce Santacruz vs. Julius Caesar Scaliger on Animal Spirits and Animal Seeds 12.15 - 13.45 Lunch break 13.45-15.00 General Discussion, introduced by Christoph Lüthy (Radboud University) Organizers: Kuni Sakamoto, Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen ([email protected]) Christoph Lüthy, Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen ([email protected]) .

Copy Link

Recommended publications

Scaliger Conference Program (With Abstracts)
Julius Caesar Scaliger and Sixteenth-Century Natural Philosophy Radboud University Nijmegen, 26/27 June 2015 Organized by Kuni Sakamoto and Christoph Lüthy Program Day 1, Friday, June 26 Erasmusplein1, Room 15.39/41 09.00 - 09.15 Welcome 09.15 - 09.30 Introduction Session 1 09.30 - 10.15 The Scaliger-Cardano Debate Revisited Ian Maclean, All Souls College, Oxford Julius Caesar Scaliger’s hypertrophic Exercitationes exotericae liber XV de Subtilitate of 1557 provoked a riposte from Girolamo Cardano, the author of the impugned De subtilitate, which appeared in 1559 with the title Actio prima in calumniatorem librorum de Subtilitate. From the time of the appearance of this polemic, there have been attempts to adjudicate whether one thinker secured a victory over the other, and if so, in respect of which issues. This paper will not approach the debate from this point of view, but rather will set out to investigate the difference in intellectual habitus of the protagonists, and will further enquire whether Cardano modified in any way his philosophical positions as a result of this bruising encounter. 10.15 - 11.00 “The Element of Fire is Quite Put Out ...”: Girolamo Cardano’s Exclusion of Fire from the Elements, and Contemporary Responses John Henry, University of Edinburgh Writing about fire in the late 1590s, in his unpublished De mundo, William Gilbert wrote “That ‘subtlety’ of Scaliger does not counter Cardano’s subtle arguments…” By 1611, when the poet John Donne lamented the doubts wrought by the new philosophies, Cardano’s insistence that fire should not be included among the elements seems to have been well known.
[Show full text]
Roman Reading Permits for the Works of Bruno and Campanella Leen Spruit
ROMAN READING PERMITS FOR THE works OF Bruno AND Campanella Leen Spruit Summary Since the second half of the sixteenth century the Roman Congregations of the Holy Office and the Index granted licences for reading forbidden books. As a rule, reading permits for books by authors who were condemned for heresy, could not be issued. However, after the promulgation of the Clementine Index in 1596, the congregations gradually attenuated the total prohibitions, and started to issue licences for books prohibited in the first class of the Index. Here, the cases of Bruno and Campanella are discussed. eading permits started being issued after the Church of Rome had R begun to systematically censure ideas and works. The grant of licenc- es for reading forbidden books was not the effect of an official decision, issued on a certain date, but rather a practice that arose with individual epi- sodes related to quite dissimilar cases. The licences granted by the Roman Congregations of the Holy Office and the Index are the main, or rather the only, instrument for assessing the difference between the hypothetical and the real efficacy of ecclesiastical censorship, and this is because the inten- tional or casual inobservance of the prohibitions, the other factor determin- ing this difference, can only be measured in an indirect way and solely for individual cases. Initially, the prohibition to grant licences for works that were considered heretical, due to the author or the content, was total. Considering that the reading of suspect or prohibited works granted to confutate « haereses et errores » frequently led to contrary results, in 1564 the licences were limited to Inquisitors only.
[Show full text]
The Scaliger-Cardano Debate Revisited
1 The Scaliger-Cardano debate revisited Many people have been drawn to comment on the debate between Scaliger and Cardano over the De subtilitate. It was one of the polemics of its day most commented upon over the century following its occurrence, for a variety of reasons, some to do with debates within neo-Aristotelianism, some to do with the development of natural philosophy, some to do with pedagogy in reformed and Lutheran universities. It was still of interest to Pierre Bayle and his contemporaries practising historia literaria in the late seventeenth century.1 In 1982, I discussed it in the context of a much later but equally energetic polemic over the history of the new science of the seventeenth century and the different theories about its relationship to the intellectual outlooks of various groups of medieval and early modern thinkers. Brian Vickers brought together a range of scholars to examine his own strong views in this debate about the distinction between occult and scientific mentalities, in the light of the accounts published by Lynn Thorndyke and Frances Yates on a range and importance of modes of occult thought, including magic and natural magic, hermeticism, neoplatonism, irrationalism, demonology, cabbala, mysticism, numerology, alchemy, astrology, and divination. Vickers characterised these modes of thought as analogical, and denied that they had anything to do with the emergence of the new science.2 In my own contribution to this conference, I examined the different senses of subtlety espoused by Cardano and Scaliger, one being a sensible and intelligible ratio or relation between substances, accidents, and representations; the other locating subtlety in the human mind as a faculty; this distinction being clearly close to the realism-nominalism debate and the sharp distinction made between nature and human perception of nature.3 I set out to 1 Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, Rotterdam, Reinier Leers, 1697, pp.
[Show full text]
Jacob Schegk on the Plastic Faculty and the Origin of Souls
CHAPTER THREE JACOB SCHEGK ON THE PLASTIC FACULTY AND THE ORIGIN OF SOULS 1. Introduction In the conclusion of his embryological treatise On the Formation of the Fetus, Galen avowed to be ignorant of the cause which forms the fetus. Although he recognized the efffects of the highest intelligence and force in fetal formation, he did not believe the soul itself, presumed to reside in the seed, to be capable of constructing the fetus: I admit my puzzlement on the subject of the substance of the soul. I am unable even to reach the level of a probable statement in this regard. And so I confess that I do not know the cause of the construction of the fetus. For I observe in this construction the utmost intelligence and power, and I cannot allow that the soul in the seed [. .] constructs the fetus, since this kind of soul is not only unintelligent but entirely devoid of reason.1 Inspired by this argument, Leoniceno wrote On Formative Power. This small monograph analyzed existing views on the notion of “formative power” (virtus formativa), which physicians thought to be responsible for fetal formation. Indeed this notion, which Galen had originally formu- lated by the term “molding faculty” (dunamis diaplastiké), was in vogue during the Middle Ages as an explanation of the formation not only of living beings but also of natural things in general. Leoniceno particularly criticized the interpretation of Averroes and Pietro d’Abano by appeal- ing to ancient Greek commentators of Aristotle such as Simplicius, whose texts were newly made available in the Renaissance.
[Show full text]
The Humanist Discourse in the Northern Netherlands
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Clashes of discourses: Humanists and Calvinists in seventeenth-century academic Leiden Kromhout, D. Publication date 2016 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Kromhout, D. (2016). Clashes of discourses: Humanists and Calvinists in seventeenth- century academic Leiden. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:26 Sep 2021 Chapter 1: The humanist discourse in the Northern Netherlands This chapter will characterize the discourse of the Leiden humanists in the first decade of the seventeenth century. This discourse was in many aspects identical to the discourse of the Republic of Letters. The first section will show how this humanist discourse found its place at Leiden University through the hands of Janus Dousa and others.
[Show full text]
Puilosopuical Poetry: Tue Contrasting Poetics of Sidney and Scaliger J
PUILOSOPUICAL POETRY: TUE CONTRASTING POETICS OF SIDNEY AND SCALIGER J. R. Brink The eclecticism of Sir Philip Sidney's De/ence 0/ Poetry is con vincingly demonstrated by the number of classical, Italian, and French sources to which his ideas have been traced.' That Sidney's own conflation and synthesis of these sources represents an in dependent and important argument has also received support in several recent discussions of his poetics. 2 A. C. Hamilton, for ex ample, has suggested that Julius Caesar Scaliger, generally conced ed to be one of Sidney's main sources, differs radically from Sidney in his classification and understanding of the kinds of poetry, but since Hamilton's primary interest is in Sidney, he does not explore the implications of this difference. 3 Following Aristotle, Sidney sees the essential ingredient of poetry as imitation, understood as feigned images or fiction; Scaliger, on the other hand, insists that verse or meter is the distinguishing characteristic of poetry. In contrast to Sidney, who gracefully sets out to defend poetry in a vernacular oration, Scaliger systematical ly explores the nature and practice of poetry in a Neo-Latin treatise. Scaliger's Poetices has never been fully translated, an in dication of the decline in his reputation. Of the two works, however, it is Scaliger's Poetices that seems most clearly applicable to certain kinds of philosophical and historical poems written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and it is Scaliger's definition of poetry as verse, rather than imitation, which influenc ed one of the most popular poetic handbooks of the late sixteenth century.
[Show full text]
Protestant Natural Philosophy and the Question of Emergence, 1540–1615
ANDREAS BLANK Protestant Natural Philosophy and the Question of Emergence, 1540–1615 I. INTRODUCTION Emergentism—the view that once material composites have reached some level of complexity potencies arise that cannot be reduced to the potencies of the constituents—was clearly articulated by some ancient thinkers, including Ar- istotle, Galen and the Aristotelian commentators Alexander of Aphrodisias and John Philoponus. According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, the soul “is a power and form, which supervenes through such a mixture upon the temperament of bodies; and it is not a proportion or a composition of the temperament” (2008, 104; 1568, 78). As Victor Caston has argued, talk about supervenience should here be taken in the technical sense of a co-variation of mental states with bod- ily states (1997, 348–349). Moreover, Caston emphasizes that, for Alexander, the soul possesses causal powers that are more than the aggregates of the causal powers of the elements (1997, 349–350). Likewise, Alexander points out that some medicaments possess powers that arise from their temperament, and since this remark stems from the context of his criticism of the harmony theory of the soul, the implication again seems to be that these are powers that go beyond the powers inherent in the harmony of elementary qualities (2008, 104; De anima 24.24–29). In the sense that Alexander ascribes distinct new powers to souls as well as to the forms of non-animate composites such as chemical blends, Caston characterizes Alexander as one of the ancient thinkers who were committed to emergentism (1997, 350). In medieval natural philosophy, too, deviant forms of emergentism—deviant due to a greater emphasis on celestial causation in the actualization of the po- tentialities of matter— have been influential, as Olaf Pluta has brought to light.1 Also the Latin term “eductio”, which was widely used to designate the concept of emergence, stems from the medieval tradition.
[Show full text]
Nero and the Last Stalk of Silphion: Collecting Extinct Nature in Early Modern Europe
424 Early Science and Medicine 19 (2014) 424-447 Keller www.brill.com/esm Nero and the Last Stalk of Silphion: Collecting Extinct Nature in Early Modern Europe Vera Keller University of Oregon [email protected] Abstract Many studies of early modern natural history focus upon observational, empirical tech- niques. Early moderns also contended with entities which could no longer be observed because they no longer existed. Although it is often assumed that extinction only emerged as a concept in the eighteenth century, the concept of natural loss appeared, often unproblematically, in areas outside natural philosophy. A survey of discussions of the extinct plant silphion across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shows that the possibility of natural loss was well aired. Paper technologies for collect- ing extinct nature ran parallel to investigations of newly found nature, and thus can place the latter in a new light. Although ideas of natural mutability often drew on ideas of historical or political change rather than philosophical concepts of natural con- stancy, techniques developed for extinct nature, such as the list of lost things, remained influential for the research agendas of naturalists. Keywords extinction – species – chain of being – desiderata – silphion Paper Technologies for Lost Things Many of the other articles in this issue explore the early modern tools developed to cope with an ever growing abundance of naturalia. How did early moderns * Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, 1293 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403–1293, USA. The author would like to thank the editors of this issue, Isabelle Charmantier and Staffan Müller-Wille.
[Show full text]
Views of Love in JULIUS CAESAR SCALIGER's POETICS1
VIEWS OF LOVE IN JULIUS CAESAR SCALIGER’S POETICS1 MARIA NI E V es MUÑOZ MAR T ÍN University of Granada Resumen En el libro III de la Poética, dedicado a la inventio, Escalígero trata todos los aspectos de la persona, acompañada de sus accidentes, que el autor especifica de acuerdo con las categorías aristotélicas. El amor aparece entre los mores, cuyo conocimiento es necesario para la perfección del poeta. Las referencias apuntan a la doctrina retórica y al ámbito de la ética y la biología. Palabras clave: Renacimiento, Poética, Amor, J. C. Escalígero. Abstract In the Third Book on Poetics which is devoted to inventio, Scaliger deals with every aspect of the persona and its accidents, specifying them according to Aristotelian categoriae. Love is one of the mores, its knowledge being necessary for the poet’s perfection. References point to rhetorical doctrine and the fields of ethics and biology. Key words: Renaissance, Poetics, Love, J. C. Scaliger. 1 This collaboration work is included in the Research Project Edición y estudio de los Poetices Libri Septem de Julio César Escalígero. Fuentes clásicas y pervivencia (Edition and Study of Poetices Libri Septem by Julius Caesar Sca- liger. Classical Sources and Survival) FF2008-05882/FILO, developed in the Department of Latin Studies of the University of Granada, and financed by the Spanish DGICYT, to whom we are most grateful. Humanitas 63 (2011) 571-582 572 Maria Nieves Muñoz Martín Experts in aesthetics, theory and literary criticism affirm the funda- mental role of Platonism during the Renaissance without reservations. It was recovered by the Medici family and Ficino’s work in Florence at the end of the 15th century and it was very influential over the next century.
[Show full text]
Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon and Richard Thomson Paul Botley University of Warwick
Three Very Different Translators: Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon and Richard Thomson Paul Botley University of Warwick This essay revisits some ideas on translation which I developed several years ago. They 477 were published as part of a book on Latin translation in the fifteenth and early six- teenth centuries, and one of the purposes of the present essay is to discover whether the intervening years have been kind to them. That book,Latin Translation in the Renaissance, examined the work of a number of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century translators, in particular, Leonardo Bruni, Giannozzo Manetti and Desiderius Erasmus, and suggested an alternative approach to categorising renaissance translations. It argued that in the fifteenth century ideas about translation became more sophisticated because of the proliferation of different translations of the same text. This was a new phenomenon: by and large, the Middle Ages had been obliged to make do with unique versions of a rather small number of Greek texts, and medieval scholars were seldom in a position to compare the merits of rival versions. In the fifteenth century, a number of versions of the same Greek text became available. As a consequence of this multiplication of renderings, even those who knew nothing of the original language were able to evaluate the differences between versions. Thus, in the fifteenth century, it became possible for a reader with no knowledge of Greek to deepen his understanding of a Greek author by collating a number of Latin translations of the original text. In such circumstances, the relation- ship of the translation to the other available translations was at least as important as the relationship of the translation to the original, Greek, text.1 Thinking about these relationships between these early modern translations led me to suggest that they could be placed into three broad categories, which I called replacements, competitors and supplements.
[Show full text]
The Architectonic Soul: the Theory of Generation in Julius Caesar Scaliger
The Architectonic Soul: The Theory of Generation in Julius Caesar Scaliger Toyama, 14/02/2016 Kuni Sakamoto 1. Introduction In 1705 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) issued an article under the title of “Considerations on Vital Principles and Plastic Natures.” There, he made a doxographical reflection. Look at the passage number 1 in the handout. So I have no need to resort, as does Cudworth, to certain immaterial plastic natures, though I recall that Julius Scaliger and other Peripatetics, as well as certain adherents of Van Helmont’s doctrine of the archeus believed that the soul makes its own body. To this I can say that it is not necessary for me nor is sufficient for me, because this preformation and this infinitely 1 complex organism provide me with material plastic natures that meet the need. Neither Leibniz’s theory of preformation nor his understanding of the Helmontian archeus concern my talk. What matters here is his reference to Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), as an Aristotelian who assumed that “the soul makes its own body.” This remark would immediately raise two questions. First, what precisely did Scaliger mean when presenting this opinion? Second, why did Scaliger claim so? What was the driving force behind his doctrine and argumentation? These two questions are what I would like to address today, through an examination of Scaliger’s theory of generation. In what follows, I shall concentrate on animal generation from seeds, putting aside the problem concerning the spontaneous generation as well as that of humans. 2. The Architect of the Body Julius Caesar Scaliger, the protagonist of this talk, published in 1557 a massive 2 philosophical work which was entitled Exotericae Exercitationes.
[Show full text]
The Calvinist Copernicans
The Calvinist Copernicans History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands, volume I The series History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands presents studies on a variety of subjects in the history of science, scholarship and academic institu tions in the Netherlands. Titles in this series 1. Rienk Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans. The reception of the new astronomy in the Dutch Republic, IJ7J-IJJo. 2002, ISBN 90-6984-340-4 2. Gerhard Wiesenfeldt, Leerer Raum in Minervas Haus. Experimentelle Natur lehre an der Universitdt Leiden, 167J- IJIJ. 2002, ISBN 90-6984-339-0 3. Rina Knoeff, Herman Boerhaave (I668- IJ}8). Calvinist chemist and pf?ysician. 2002, ISBN 90-6984-342-0 4. Johanna Levelt Sengers, How fluids unmix. Discoveries ~ the School of Van der Waals and Kamerlingh Onnes. 2002, ISBN 90-6984-357-9 Editorial Board K. van Berkel, University of Groningen W.Th.M. Frijhoff, Free University of Amsterdam A. van Helden, Utrecht University W.E. Krul, University of Groningen A. de Swaan, Amsterdam School of Sociological Research R.P.W. Visser, Utrecht University The Calvinist Copernicans The reception of the new astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575-1750 Rienk Vermij Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam 2002 © 2002 Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy ing, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the pub lisher. Edita KNAW, P.O. Box 19121, IOOO GC Amsterdam, the Netherlands edita@ bureau.knaw.nl, www.knaw.nl/edita The paper in this publication meets the requirements of @l Iso-norm 9706 (1994) for permanence The investigations were supported by the Foundation for Historical Re search, which is subsidized by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Contents Acknowledgements V111 Introduction PART 1.
[Show full text]