DOCSLIB.ORG

The Architectonic Soul: the Theory of Generation in Julius Caesar Scaliger

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read 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. This work consists of 365 chapters, or “exercises,” and the author devotes its exercise number 6 to the problem of generation. His discussion begins with a criticism of the contemporary physician, Jean Fernal (1497–1558). Fernel was a physician at the University of Paris and had just published On the Hidden Causes Things in 1548. In this book, Fernel introduces the doctrine that the development of matter gives rise to the form, or the soul, of the future animal. Scaliger dissents from it. Look at the passage number 2: From these discussions, the vain ambition of recent people’s [i.e., Fernel’s] opinion is evident. They say: the eduction of form from the potentiality of matter is the preparation of matter to receive form. This preparation occurs through continuous development, until it reaches the greatest perfection. For it will then have attained even the form of a substance. Indeed, form necessarily accompanies that perfection and never abandons it. Scaliger interprets Fernel as claiming that the continuous development of matter results in the form of the new entity. This idea, Scaliger claims, “perceives form too derogatorily,” for 3 the preparation of matter produces only the accumulation of accidental qualities, a process that would never arrive at a form which should be completely immaterial. In short, we should make a sharp distinction between immaterial form and material components. The former never derives from the latter. Scaliger thus maintains that form does not appear from the development of matter. Rather, it exists from the beginning, that is, from the moument when the male parent produces the seed. But at this point of production, there is only the seed; the organic body of the future animal has not yet been constructed. Who carries out this construction? Scaliger’s answer can be found in the passage number 3: We should therefore make clear how form is educed through preparation, since form itself is the performer of preparation. For form changes the whole and arranges the parts for its own sake. It would therefore educe itself. They [i.e., Fernel] therefore did not express themselves well when they said: “when the greatest perfection of preparation will have been attained, the form of a substance will also be attained.” For form itself exists prior to that. Therefore what is attained is not form, but its actuality, whereby the form may enjoy the benefit of that actuality 4 afterward. The ancients used the term “being educed,” because they thought that it is effected by an external agent. It is, however, the emergence of form, rather than its eduction. Form prepares matter for bodily formation. Through this preparation, it educes itself from potentiality to actuality, a process that is not well expressed by the usual term “eduction;” rather “emergence” (emersio) would better capture what is actually happening. The point here is that no external agent involves in this process. And this point is closely related to another criticism Scaliger makes of Fernel. According to Scaliger, Fernel contradicts himself when he says that “every form comes, and is introduced, from the outside, but only when matter has already been prepared for it.” Scaliger is here referring to Fernel’s fundamental assumption that form is given to matter by the heavens. It is, Scaliger argues, incompatible with Fernel’s earlier remark that form is educed from the potentiality of matter. How does the same thing come from the heavens and from the potentiality of matter? Fernel’s theory, Scaliger adds, also betrays the basic principle of generation. As Aristotle points out in the Metaphysics, a begetter and a begotten must be two in number, but one in species. If, as Fernel claims, the form of the offspring originated in the heavens, 5 every generation would be spontaneous. Scaliger argues that this absurd consequence invalidates Fernel’s theory of the heavenly origin of form. The discussion so far indicates Scaliger’s assumption that only the immaterial soul is responsible for animal generation. He elaborates on this idea on the basis of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Look at the passage number 4. Nonetheless, there is also the immortal view of Aristotle. In the seed there is the soul that shapes a body for its own sake, as is said in the seventh book of the Metaphysics. “The seed is,” he says, “like an artisan.” An artisan holds the form [of an artifact] in his power. So Aristotle repeatedly says in the same books: “the material house arises from the immaterial house.” Obviously, an artisan locates the form [of an artifact] in matter. But he does not accept it from the outside like accepting a guest or a leaseholder, but he has it as something indigenous and self-grown. Just as the artisan has the form of the artifact in mind and imposes it on matter, so the soul in the seed has the plan of the future animal in itself and organizes the body in accordance 6 with that plan, which was give by God ultimately. As the ancient philosopher Themistius said, “the soul is the architect of its own house.” But unlike the human artisan, the soul does not act on something external, but on the seed itself. Another feature of this immaterial artisan is that it builds its artifact (namely, the body) without using any instrument. Look at the passage number 5. This natural power [of the soul] acts without any instrument. For no quality known to humans can be the instrument for [producing] formations, positions, numbers, figures, and other things of the same kind. It can be the instrument only for secretion or concretion, thickening or rarefaction, extension or contraction, cohesion or dissolution, roughness or smoothness, hardness or softness, stickiness or dryness, and other such things, which have been provided by nature to produce similar [i.e., homogeneous] parts. Note that this is contrary to the traditional assumption that the soul uses qualities for bodily formation. As already seen in Scaliger’s criticism of Fernel, this architectonic soul is supposed to 7 be in the seed, right from the moment when the seed is produced by the male parent. And this same soul not only builds the body, but also governs it after its construction. Therefore, the seed is, in a sense, a small animal, at least in terms of the form that informs it. To take the example of a dog, “the seed is an imperfect dog, lacking only the formation of the body.” This is very much a preformationist theory; no wonder that it was later criticized by William Harvey, the epigenesist. But how does the seed acquire the soul? Scaliger explains this in the passage number 6: But the soul generates the soul through its advancement (promotio) in the same manner as the soul submerges into the new matter of food in the growth [of the bodily size]. And we have an example in front of our eyes: when we receive a flame from the flame of a torch, the original flame remains to be complete as before. Self-multiplication, therefore, is the ultimate mechanism of the propagation of the soul. 8 3. Against the Surge of Materialism We have now understood what Scaliger meant when he claimed that the soul makes its own body. The point of this claim is not that the soul is the principal cause of generation; rather it highlights that the soul causes generation not only principally, but also autonomously, without receiving any help from qualities. But why did Scaliger so strenuously exclude the involvement of qualities from the process of generation? Was there any philosopher who highlighted their role? In this connection, the passage number 7 is particularly illuminating: You [i.e., Cardano] maintain, and publicly support, the horrible absurdity of Hippocrates, to which Galen shows trepidation, that the soul is nothing but the celestial heat. Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576/77) was the main target of criticism in the Exercitationes; indeed, the book itself was composed as a critique of his popular philosophical encyclopedia De subtilitate (Nuremberg, 1550).
Load more

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