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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Elements, and Contemporary Responses John Henry, University of Edinburgh Writing about fire in the late 1590s, in his unpublished De mundo, William Gilbert wrote “That ‘subtlety’ of Scaliger does not counter Cardano’s subtle arguments…” By 1611, when the poet John Donne lamented the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. This paper will look at Cardano’s arguments for excluding fire from the elements, and the subsequent response of Scaliger and others. 11.00 - 11.30 Coffee break 11.30 - 12.15 Who’s the Real Averroist Here? Cardano and Scaliger on Radical Aristotelianism Guido Giglioni, the Warburg Institute, London When Cardano and Scaliger are set against the background of the slow but inexorable demise of the Aristotelian worldview, it becomes apparent that they both belonged to a characteristic strand of Aristotelianism which was then in decline: systematic and encyclopaedic in scope and still permeated by vestiges of Averroism. With respect to this last point, it is interesting to see how they each accused each other of more or less overt Averroism. Intellectually, they grew up in environments which were saturated with elements of radical Aristotelianism, and they absorbed many features of that powerful explanatory framework. For different reasons, however, they both felt that the time had come to distance themselves from the most questionable aspects of the Aristotelian tradition such as the emphasis on determinism, the belief in the eternity of the world, and the acceptance, on philosophical grounds, of the thesis that the human soul was mortal. The need to readjust their positions vis-à-vis Aristotle was especially urgent since, after some two centuries of almost uncontested rule in Italian universities, Averroism was becoming more and more toxic by the day. In my paper I will show how, when set against this backdrop, the rivalry between Cardano and Scaliger can be interpreted as representative of larger conflicts affecting the world of Renaissance Aristotelianism. 12.15 - 13.45 Lunch break Session 2 13.45 - 14.30 Cardano vs. Scaliger on the Conception of God and the Relation between Him and His Creation José Manuel García Valverde, University of Sevilla It might be said that the theology of Girolamo Cardano, expressed in his De uno and in his Hymnus seu Canticum ad Deum, is based on the conception of a universe which is organized around an ontological scale ranging from the sublime to the humblest. In this scale what is more imperfect emanates from what is more perfect in a necessary arrangement where everything is referred to a single principle, which is the universal source of being and goodness. Cardano maintains, then, that the evil in the world is only the manifestation of potentiality, imperfection and removal from act and perfection. So, from the point of view of his theology, God must be considered as the perfect, simple and necessary being and, secondly, the world as the necessary effect that arises from the being and the goodness of its maker. The purpose of my lecture will be to compare this view of God with the theological claims made by Scaliger in his Exotericae Exercitationes, especially when he tackles the question of whether or not God could do what he did better than in the way in which he did. 14.30 - 15.15 Anti-Naturalism and the “Religion of Form” in Julius Caesar Scaliger Kuni Sakamoto, Radboud University Scaliger’s Exercitationes is a notoriously unsystematic work. This fact much shaped the understanding of this work, especially since the second half of the seventeenth century, merely as a miscellaneous collection of natural historical reports with a pile of personal diatribes against Cardano. This pejorative perception, however, stands in a sharp contrast to the serious engagement with this work by earlier philosophers. Is it, then, not really possible to find any coherence in Scaliger’s philosophy? Taking this possibility seriously, the present talk searches for the philosophical fundamentals in the Exercitationes. A clue will be given by examining who are criticized by Scaliger. His points of criticism of various authors will, when taken together, reveal that he repeatedly attacks certain clusters of ideas. I would propose that Scaliger’s strong antipathy against these ideas crystallized in his singular conception of form, which underlies much of the exposition in the Exercitationes. 15.15 - 15.45 Coffee break 15.45 - 16.30 Julius Caesar Scaliger on Aristotle’s Animals and Theophrastus’ Plants Stefano Perfetti, University of Pisa Julius Cesar Scaliger left us a vast array of commentaries on Peripatetic biological treatises: he commented on Aristotle’s Historia animalium, on Theophrastus’ Historia plantarum and De causis plantarum, and on the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis. What immediately strikes is that these commentaries, neglecting all scholastic conventions, constitute a lively workshop of literary experimentation with different literary genres and modules. In fact, they range from literal scholia (De causis plantarum) to semi- autobiographical humanist dialogued “novelizations” (De plantis). Notwithstanding this diverse literary scenario, one may discern several constant focal points. In this lecture, I will examine Scaliger’s (i) scientific vocabulary; (ii) analysis of argumentative patterns; and (iii) analysis of theoretical and ontological consistency. Day 2, Saturday, June 27 Faculty Club Huize Heyendael Geert Grooteplein-Noord 9, 6525 EZ Session 3 9.30 - 10.15 Roman Censorship of Cardano and Scaliger Leen Spruit, Università di Roma “La Sapienza” In this lecture, I discuss the investigations of the Roman Congregation for the Index into the works of Girolamo Cardano and Julius Caesar Scaliger, focusing on the censurae of Cardano’s De subtilitate and of Scaliger’s rebuttal, the Exercitationes. Attention will be paid to the historical and doctrinal context of the Catholic censorial interventions, their outcome and effects in the long run, thus attempting to shed light on the origins and nature of the conflict between ecclesiastical censorship and certain currents of early modern thought. 10.15-11.00 The reception of J.C. Scaliger in Germany: Rudolph Goclenius’ Adversaria ad exotericas exercitationes Simone De Angelis, University of Graz The reception of J.C. Scaliger in Germany is inevitably linked to the name of the Marburg professor for logic and physics Rudolph Goclenius. He commented aspects of Scaliger'sExotericarum exercitationes in a series of papers published in the 1590s. In my paper I will focus on Goclenius's discussion of Scaliger's doctrine of the soul, which the latter conceptualized against the interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of the soul adopted by the Paduan professors. Where on the one hand Goclenius approved Scaliger's criticism of the Paduans, on the other he departed from Scaliger in his interpretation of the concepts of anima andintellectus. I will show how Goclenius' analysis of seminal psychological concepts aimed at establishing a metaphysical theory of the soul which he opposed to the naturalism of themedicus philologus. 11.00 - 11.30 Coffee break 11.30-12.15 Antonio Ponce Santacruz vs. Julius Caesar Scaliger on Animal Spirits and Animal Seeds Andreas Blank, University of Paderborn This article examines the detailed critical response to Julius Caesar Scaliger’s views on animate animal spirits and animate animal seeds in the early seventeenth-century medical writings of Antonio Ponce Santacruz, royal physician to the Spanish king Philipp IV. In particular, it studies how the response to Scaliger’s arguments shaped Santacruz’s view that both animal spirits and animal seeds are purely material, inanimate beings. Building on little-known aspects of the work of Gentile da Foligno (d. 1348), one of the leading medieval commentators on Avicenna, Santacruz developed a conception of animal spirits and animal seeds as separate instrumental causes that operate solely through the transmission and modification of motion. Pursuing this strategy led Santacruz to develop alternatives to Scaliger’s views concerning the mutual influence between body parts and concerning the nature of biological reproduction. At the same time, the example of Santacruz illustrates how important Scaliger’s work was for the emergence of positions that were opposed to his own views. 12.15 - 13.45 Lunch break 13.45 - 15.00 General Discussion, introduced by Christoph Lüthy (Radboud University) Organizers: 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]) .
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