Reflection

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Berger
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Comprehensive Manner ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University

This essay discusses a novel category of broadside in which entire systems of logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and moral philosophy are represented in a comprehensive manner and coherent format, by showing, on a single page, how individual elements of the system relate to the whole. These broadsides inspired viewers to explore philosophical topics through visually appealing artworks. They functioned to make the activity of learning philosophy and investigating philosophical notions pleasurable and entertaining. In this Reflection, details in two broadsides that present pictorial interpretations of the notion of pleasure and its dangers are examined, in order to show the equivocal attitudes toward sensual pleasures in the convent schools associated with the University of Paris in the early seventeenth century.

The Marginalization of Astrology in Seventeenth-Century Scotland

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 464-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Ridder-Patrick
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Observational Methods ◽  
Core Component ◽  
University Library ◽  
University Curriculum ◽  
The University ◽  
Influential Individuals

As evidenced by student notebooks, astrology was a core component of the university curriculum in Scotland until the late seventeenth century. Edinburgh University Library catalogues document that purchases of astrology books peaked in the 1670s. By 1700, however, astrology’s place in academia had been irrevocably lost. The reasons for this abrupt elimination include changes in natural philosophy as scholastic ideas and texts were shed and Cartesianism, Copernicanism, Newtonianism and the experimental and observational methods were adopted. The changing identity of astrological practitioners also played a major role, as did the personal animosity of influential individuals like the mathematician and astronomer David Gregory.


Zabarella, Jacopo (1533–89)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eckhard Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Renaissance Period ◽  
Extensive Body ◽  
Intellectual Discipline ◽  
University Of Padua ◽  
The University ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

Jacopo Zabarella was a professor of philosophy at the University of Padua. His work shows conclusively not only that it was possible to philosophize creatively within the limits of the Aristotelian tradition but also that this was still being done towards the end of the Renaissance period. Zabarella’s aim was not to overthrow Aristotle’s doctrines, but to expound them as clearly as possible. He produced an extensive body of work on the nature of logic, arguing that it was neither an art nor a science, but rather an instrumental intellectual discipline which arose from the philosopher’s practice of philosophizing or forming secondary notions. He also worked extensively on scientific method. He gives an account of order as disposing what we come to know through method, and he divides method into the method of composition, which moves from cause to effect, and the method of resolution, which moves from effect to cause. He also discussed regressus (a method for uniting composition and resolution) and thought that it would enable the scientist to discover new causal relations at the same time as proving conclusions with absolute necessity. Zabarella’s work was instrumental in a renewal of natural philosophy, methodology and the theory of knowledge; and it had a major impact on seventeenth-century philosophy textbooks, especially in the Protestant countries of northern Europe.

Albert of Saxony (c.1316–90)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Biard
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
New Physics ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
University Of Vienna ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University ◽  
Epistemological Realism

Albert of Saxony, active in the middle and late fourteenth century, taught at the University of Paris and was later instrumental in founding the University of Vienna. He is best known for his works on logic and natural philosophy. In the latter field he was influenced by John Buridan, but he was also influenced by the English logicians. His thought is rather typical of the sort that followed Buridan, combining critical analysis of language with epistemological realism. He was important in the diffusion of terminist logic in central Europe, and of the new physics in northern Italy.

Humanist Dissemination of Epicureanism

2020 ◽  
pp. 613-640
Author(s):  
Ada Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Over Time

Renaissance humanists first studied Lucretius, and the Epicurean content in Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, as part of their broader project to restore political stability to Italy and Europe by reconstructing the philosophical roots of classical Roman virtue. Transformation of the texts over time gradually expanded the study of Epicureanism, from a fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century audience interested primarily in philology and moral philosophy, to a later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century audience more interested in natural philosophy, medicine, and ontology. While many prominent scholars of Epicureanism faced persecution for their beliefs, the charges levied against them were not related to Epicureanism but to diverse heterodoxies of the day, from syncretism to Protestantism. This, and the preponderance of anti-Epicurean writings, reveals that most Renaissance scholars treated Epicurus less as a teacher than as a foe or gadfly, developing fruitful and often radical new ideas in opposition to Epicureanism, or appropriating some Epicurean concepts while rebutting others.

Platonism, Renaissance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Hankins
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Marsilio Ficino ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
School Philosophy ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time

Though it never successfully challenged the dominance of Aristotelian school philosophy, the revival of Plato and Platonism was an important phenomenon in the philosophical life of the Renaissance and contributed much to the new, more pluralistic philosophical climate of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Medieval philosophers had had access only to a few works by Plato himself, and, while the indirect influence of the Platonic tradition was pervasive, few if any Western medieval philosophers identified themselves as Platonists. In the Renaissance, by contrast, Western thinkers had access to the complete corpus of Plato’s works as well as to the works of Plotinus and many late ancient Platonists; there was also a small but influential group of thinkers who identified themselves as Christian Platonists. In the fifteenth century, the most important of these were to be found in the circles of Cardinal Bessarion (1403–72) in Rome and of Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) in Florence. Platonic themes were also central to the philosophies of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), the two most powerful and original thinkers of the Quattrocento. While the dominant interpretation of the Platonic dialogues throughout the Renaissance remained Neoplatonic, there was also a minority tradition that revived the sceptical interpretation of the dialogues that had been characteristic of the early Hellenistic Academy. In the sixteenth century Platonism became a kind of ‘countercultural’ phenomenon, and Plato came to be an important authority for scientists and cosmologists who wished to challenge the Aristotelian mainstream: men like Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Francesco Patrizi and Galileo. Nevertheless, the Platonic dialogues were rarely taught in the humanistic schools of fifteenth-century Italy. Plato was first established as an important school author in the sixteenth century, first at the University of Paris and later in German universities. In Italy chairs of Platonic philosophy began to be established for the first time in the 1570s. Though the hegemony of Aristotelianism was in the end broken by the new philosophy of the seventeenth century, Plato’s authority did much to loosen the grip of Aristotle on the teaching of natural philosophy in the universities of late Renaissance Europe.

Bacon, Roger (c.1214–92/4)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgette Sinkler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Scientific Experiment ◽  
Latin West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Century Science

Associated with both the University of Paris and Oxford University, Roger Bacon was one of the first in the Latin West to lecture and comment on Aristotle’s writings on subjects other than logic. After he came to know Robert Grosseteste’s work in natural philosophy, he became the advocate of a curricular reform that emphasized scientific experiment and the study of languages. His views were often unpopular, and he constantly belittled all who disagreed with him. Bacon’s work in logic and semantic theory had some influence during his lifetime and immediately after his death. His work in science, however, had little impact. His renown in the history of science is due in part to his being viewed as a precursor of the Oxford Calculators, who in turn anticipated certain important developments in seventeenth-century science.

The Anonymous Peterhouse Master and the Natural Philosophy of Plants

Traditio ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 313-326
Author(s):  
R. James Long
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Albert The Great ◽  
University Curricula ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University ◽  
Latin Version

Early in the thirteenth century, probably within the first decade, a treatise on plants was translated from the Arabic by Alfred of Sareshel (or Alveredus Anglicus), which was to become the foundation of the science of botany for the Latin-speaking world. This treatise was until the sixteenth century universally ascribed to Aristotle and awarded all the authority accorded the Philosopher in the other sciences. Within a generation of the appearance of the Latin version the De plantis had become a set text in university curricula and by 1254 was prescribed by statute at the University of Paris as an examination subject. Roger Bacon was lecturing on the text at Paris already in the 1240s and a decade later Albert the Great was composing his monumental and never-to-be-surpassed commentary on the same text.

scholarly journals Towards a New Methodology for Natural Philosophy: Latin Averroism Revisited

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 131-155
Author(s):  
Pilar Herráiz Oliva
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
Siger Of Brabant ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Special Case ◽  
Shed Light

The reception of Aristotelian philosophy with Averroes’s commentaries in the thirteenth-century Latin world promoted a new way of understanding natural philosophy and its method. A very special case among the readers of such commentaries, mostly found at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris, are the so-called averroistae. What these averroistae actually were is still a matter of discussion in current scholarship, whereas there is kind of consensus regarding the main exponents of this philosophical movement, namely Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia. The aim of this paper is to shed light on this topic by providing a re-definition of Averroism in the 13th century. To do this, I will analyse some of the most important works of the aforementioned authors in an attempt to clarify the specificity of their philosophical program.

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