Air, Wind, Sun, Spirit

Nuncius ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 658-682
Author(s):  
Frances Gage
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Early Modern Medicine

Guido Reni’s early critics described him as a painter of “celestial ideas,” and his artistic process has been characterized as one rooted in the fantasia and the Idea. From the seventeenth-century on, Reni’s figures were praised for the “airs of the heads,” a notion with astrological and medical connotations, while the papal physician and art critic Giulio Mancini described Reni’s manner as “spirited,” a term suggestive of the airy movement Reni so powerfully represented in his Aurora. The concept of “spirit” or “spirits” also retained important connotations in early modern medicine and natural philosophy. A reconsideration of Reni’s Aurora in the context of medical and natural philosophical investigations of generation, artistic creation and the nature of and relationship between celestial and terrestrial regions demonstrates the connections between early modern artistic reception, medicine and natural philosophy.

scholarly journals ‘Magic coins’ and ‘magic squares’: the discovery of astrological sigils in the Oldenburg Letters

2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
The Body ◽  
Perceived Efficacy ◽  
Magic Squares ◽  
Early Modern Medicine

Enclosed in a 1673 letter to Henry Oldenburg were two drawings of a series of astrological sigils, coins and amulets from the collection of Strasbourg mathematician Julius Reichelt (1637–1719). As portrayals of particular medieval and early modern sigils are relatively rare, this paper will analyse the role of these medals in medieval and early modern medicine, the logic behind their perceived efficacy, and their significance in early modern astrological and cabalistic practice. I shall also demonstrate their change in status in the late seventeenth century from potent magical healing amulets tied to the mysteries of the heavens to objects kept in a cabinet for curiosos. The evolving perception of the purpose of sigils mirrored changing early modern beliefs in the occult influences of the heavens upon the body and the natural world, as well as the growing interests among virtuosi in collecting, numismatics and antiquities.

scholarly journals Puer barbatus: Precocious Puberty in Early Modern Medicine

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-52
Author(s):  
Diederik F Janssen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Precocious Puberty ◽  
Pubertal Timing ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Social Stressors ◽  
Marriage Age ◽  
Early Modern Medicine ◽  
Novel Reading

Abstract During early modernity, medico-legal concerns with timing puberty gave way to physiological and medical-hygienic concerns with pubertal timing. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medical-jurisprudential tracts isolated rare cases of conception before the legal marriage age. Scattered reports of “monstrously” early menarche and “prodigious” male puberty were offered from the latter half of the seventeenth century. Tied to excess heat, moisture, plethora and climate since antiquity, in the second half of the eighteenth century pubertal timing attracted sustained commentary regarding the purported role of social stressors, from novel-reading to diet and trousers. Both the known variability and strikingly outlying instances of pubertal timing thus provided an inroad to unravelling such perennial explanatory devices as temperament, constitution, and life style. Despite and in part because of its explanatory significance in early modern physiology, leading eighteenth-century nosologists did not yet itemize precocious puberty. One precocious boy described in the 1740s, the Willingham Prodigy, provided the best documented early medical and public response. Formal nosological interest followed by the 1760s, initially under Haller’s heading of excessive growth (incrementum nimium, tied to enhanced circulation) and only much later under Meckel the Younger’s heading of premature development (vorschnelle Entwicklung).

Language Matters: ‘Counsel’ in Early Modern and Modern Medicine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Sabroe ◽  
Phil Withington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Successful Scientist

Francis Bacon is famous today as one of the founding fathers of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century. Although not an especially successful scientist himself, he was nevertheless the most eloquent and influential spokesperson for an approach to knowledge that promised to transform human understanding of both humanity and its relationship with the natural and social worlds. The central features of this approach, as they emerged in Bacon’s own writings and the work of his protégés and associates after 1605, are equally well known. They include the importance of experiment, observation, and a sceptical attitude towards inherited wisdom (from the ‘ancients’ in general and Aristotle in particular).

Theological Foundations for Modern Science?

Dialogue ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
Theological Foundations ◽  
Recent Collection ◽  
Scientific Imagination

It is often said that philosophy in the seventeenth century returned from a Christian otherworldliness to a pagan engagement, theoretically and practically, with material nature. This process is often described as one of secularization, and the splitting off of science from natural philosophy and metaphysics is a traditional figure in accounts of the emergence of the modern. At the same time, the historiographical assumption that early modern science had religious and philosophical foundations has informed such classics as E. A. Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1932), Gerd Buchdahl's Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (1969), and Amos Funkenstein's Theology and the Scientific Imagination (1986). A recent collection testifies to continuing interest in the theme of a positive relationship between theology and science.

Henry More and William Petty: Revisiting an Early Modern Polemic

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihnea Dobre
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Epistolary Exchange

Abstract This paper explores an overlooked aspect of the brief but intense correspondence between William Petty and Henry More, making use of the Hartlib Papers Online. Traditionally, the brief epistolary exchange between More and Petty has been seen in the light of an opposition between Cartesian rationalism and Baconian empiricism. A look at the original manuscripts, however, shows that the opposition was not originally framed in those terms at all. This article draws attention to the actors’ original categories, and places this exchange in the evolving landscape of seventeenth-century natural philosophy.

Irenism and Natural Philosophy in Rudolfine Prague: The Case of David Gans

1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah J. Efron
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Central European ◽  
Foregone Conclusion

The ArgumentDavid Gans (1541–1613), a German Jew who was educated in Poland and spent his adulthood in Prague, produced over his lifetime a large and unprecedented corpus of Hebrew introductions to various liberal disciplines, chiefly astronomy. Gans believed that the disciplines he described might help to mediate between Christians and Jews, by serving as a shared subject of study. He considered these subjects to be uniquely apt for shared study because they took them to be theologically neutral.Gans's hopes went unfulfilled, and most of his books remained unpublished and ignored. Still, his own firm belief in the plausibility of his project implies that it was not a foregone conclusion near the start of the seventeenth century that astronomy and other liberal disciplines would find no purchase among Central European Jews. It also suggests that the mutual alienation between intellectuals of different confessions that has been emphasized by some historians might have been less pronounced than is often imagined. Further, Gans's belief that these disciplines could encourage interdenominational discourse and respect, and his intimation that such beliefs were shared by Kepler and Brahé, suggest the intriguing possibility that natural philosophy was valued by at least some of its early modern practitioners as an irenic undertaking.

scholarly journals ‘Colouring’ — Material Depiction in Flemish and Dutch Baroque Art Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 243-265
Author(s):  
Lisa Wiersma
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Surface Effects ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
Human Flesh

Seventeenth-century painters were masters at painting objects and beings that seem tangible. Most elaborate was painting translucent materials like skins and pulp: human flesh and grapes, for instance, require various surface effects and suggest the presence of mass below the upper layers. Thus, the viewer is more or less convinced that a volume or object is present in an illusionary space. In Dutch, the word ‘stofuitdrukking’ is used: expression or indication of material, perhaps better understood as rendering of material. In English, ‘material depiction’ probably captures this painterly means best: it includes rendering of surface effects, while revealing the underlying substance, and it implies that weight and mass are suggested. Simple strokes of paint add up to materials and things that are convincingly percieved. At first glance, material depiction hardly seems a topic in early-modern art theory, yet 17th-century painters are virtually unequalled as regards this elaborate skill. Therefore, 17th-century written sources were studied to define how these might discuss material depiction, if not distinctly. This study concerns one of many questions regarding the incredible convincingness of 17th-century material depiction: besides wondering why the illusions work (Di Cicco et al., this issue) and how these were achieved (Wiersma, in press), the question should be asked why this convincingness was sought after. Was it mere display of ability and skill? And how was material depiction perceived, valued and enjoyed? First, contemporary terminology is determined: the seemingly generic term ‘colouring’ signified the application of convincing material depiction especially — which is not as self-evident as it sounds. Second, and extensively, the reader will find that convincing or appealing material depiction was considered a reference to religion and natural philosophy.

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