Bücher der Reihe International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Idees

This book describes how and why the early modern period witnessed the marginalisation of astrology in Western natural philosophy, and the re-adoption of the cosmological view of the existence of a plurality of worlds in the universe, allowing the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

1. Introduction: Missing a Soul that Endows Bodies with Life.- 2. Souls, Parts of Soul, and Vegetation in Aristotle.- 3. The Vegetative Soul in the Neoplatonic Tradition.- 4. Galenic Anatomo-Physiology of the Vegetative Soul.- 5. Expanding the Parva Naturalia-Project: Albertus Magnus on nutrition.- 6. How to Explain Vegetative Functions of an Immaterial Soul?.- 7. Jesuit Vegetative Souls: Lessius and the Conimbricenses on men''s ''lowest'' functions.- 8. Towards the Elimination of the Anima Vegetativa: Some Intellectualistic Tendencies in the Jesuits Suárez and Arriaga.- 9. Daniel Sennert on the Vegetative Soul and its Powers.- 10. Nicolaus Taurellus on Forms, Vegetative Souls and the Question of Emergence.- 11. Generation and the Vegetative Soul: A ''Hermetic'' Perspective from Marburg (1612).- 12. The Galenic soul in the Renaissance.- 13. Anatomy and faculties of the soul in Servetus and Columbus.- 14. The Matter of Life. Theories of Spontaneous Generation in the Late Sixteenth-Century Italy.- 15. Van Helmont''s theory of digestion and nutrition.- 16. Concoction, Transmutation, and Living Spirits: Francis Bacon''s Experiments with Artificial Life.- 17. The Vegetative Functions of the Soul in Descartes''s Meditations.- 18. (Failed) Ontological Revolutions. The Vegetative Soul in Guy de La Brosse, René Descartes, and Pierre Gassendi.- 19. Marin Cureau de la Chambre''s Conception of the Vegetative Soul.- 20. Scholastic Cartesianism. Juan Caramuel and the Negation of the Vegetative Soul in his Cartesian Manuscript.- 21. Cartesianising Vegetative Souls: Hylarchic Principles and Plastic Natures in More and Cudworth.- 22. Re-Inventing the Vegetable Soul? More''s Spirit of Nature and Cudworth''s Plastic Nature Reconsidered.- 23. Vegetative Epistemology: the Cognitive Principles of Life in William Harvey and Francis Glisson.- 24. Plants and Brains: The Vegetative Soul and Its Links with the Imagination in Early Modern Medicine and Philosophy.- 25. The Vegetative Soul in Glisson''s Natural Philosophy.- 26. Life as Vegetation. Limiting Cases and Theological Problems for Seventeenth-century Thinkers.- 27. An Alternative to the Vegetative Soul: Galen''s Natural Spirit in the Late 17th-Century Medical Conception of Digestive Functions.- 28. The Notion of Vegetative Soul in the Leibniz-Stahl Controversy.- 29. Newton''s ''Vegetative Spirit''.- 30. Beyond Structure: Vegetative Powers from Wolff to Hanov.- 31. The Role of Vegetative Powers in Animal Physiologies: Bichat''s Order of Two Lives.

This thought provoking book deals with religious scholarship and important controversies of the early modern period, specifically those relating to the question of the salvation of the pagans and the afterlife. From the Reformation, through the Renaissance and on to the seventeenth and eighteenth century, this was a time when religious scholarship was updated with the discoveries of the New World and colonial expansion. These chapters present new work, shedding light on the interplay of philosophy and theology in key thinkers such as Montaigne, Leibniz, Bayle and Spinoza, but also in less known authors such as Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and Sebastian Castellio.Readers will discover analysis of the reshaping of specific theological issues, focussing on the reception of ancient philosophical traditions such as Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and scepticism. The authors investigate the relationship between the ethical models inspired by the heroes andphilosophers of antiquity and the ¿new philosophy¿. Above all, this book enables exploration of the ways in which discussions of the salvation and virtues of pagans intersected with the early modern reception of ancient philosophy, including a reassessment of the question of the moral status of unbelievers in the early modern period.Students and faculty working on early modern intellectual history will find that this book both inspires and enriches their knowledge. Those with an interest in Renaissance humanism, the history of early modern philosophy and science, in theology, or the history of religion will also appreciate the new contributions that it makes.

This volume examines modern scepticism in all main philosophical areas: epistemology, science, metaphysics, morals, and religion.

This is the fourth volume of Models of the History of Philosophy, a collaborative work on the history of the history of philosophy dating from the Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth century.

In fact, even though Galenism was gradually dismissed as a system, several of his ideas spread through the modern world and left their mark on natural philosophy, rational theology, teleology, physiology, biology, botany, and the philosophy of medicine.

This volume emphasizes the diversity and fruitfulness of early modern mechanism as a program, as a concept, as a model. Mechanistic study of the living body but also of the mind and mental processes are examined in careful historical focus, dealing with figures ranging from the first-rank (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Cudworth, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Kant) to less well-known individuals (Scaliger, Martini) or prominent natural philosophers who have been neglected in recent years (Willis, Steno, etc.). The volume moves from early modern medicine and physiology to late Enlightenment and even early 19th-century psychology, always maintaining a conceptual focus. It is a contribution to a newly active field in the history and philosophy of early modern life science. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of medicine and the development of mechanistic theories.

The book examines the life and the writings of Gabriele Biondo, a secular priest who lived in the little town of Modigliana between the second half of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth century. Through a careful examination of his writings and the sources he used, this book allows the reader to obtain a more precise understanding of Biondo, his background, his life, his movements, the difficulties that he encountered (mainly with the ecclesiastical authorities and the other members of the clergy, but also with civic leaders), and the main events of his life. Additionally, Biondo was the leader of a minor following formed by nuns, secular women, and laymen. Therefore, this book illustrates Biondös pastoral activity, the ideas and principles that supported his actions, and the objectives he was pursuing. Given these various objectives, this book is of interest to those scholars and academics interested in the religious tensions that swept through Europe inthe years immediately preceding the Protestant Reformation and who, consequently, seek to investigate Biondös personal and complex answer to these tensions.

This book describes the international effort to give order to colours and thus facilitate communication about it, two topics deemed essential to a modernising world that were also recognizably complex. Expert essays will enhance readers' understanding of the struggle to coordinate nature with art at a time when approaches to both were undergoing rapid change. Ordering Colours shows how such seemingly trivial concerns as identifying the basic colours and disseminating appropriate colour diagrams had to meet philosophical, scientific and professional needs across Europe. Contributors detail the many schemes for colour systematization and their real-world applications; questions of concern to both academic- and manufacturing-focused investigators throughout the long 18th century. They bring together original research and new thinking about landmark early modern studies to address important developments as well as neglected historical contributions of European arts, sciences, andeconomies. This collection is an important addition to the libraries of all who are interested in public culture and manufacturing developments in the early modern period and is aimed at historians of art, technology, philosophy and physics.

The book offers an analysis of Joachim Jungius¿ Texturæ Contemplatio - a hitherto-unpublished manuscript written in German and Latin that deals with weaving, knitting and other textile practices, attempting to present as well various fabrics and textile techniques in a scientifical and even mathematical framework. The book aims to provide the epistemological, technical and historic framework for Jungius¿ manuscript, inspecting fabrics, weaving techniques as well as looms and other textile machines in Holy Roman Empire during the Early Modern Period. It also offers a unique investigation of the notion and metaphor of ¿texture¿ during this period, and explores, within the wider context of the ¿meeting¿ or ¿trading zones¿ thesis, the relations between artisans and natural philosophers during the 17th century. The book is of interest to historians of philosophy and mathematics, as well as historians of technology.