Description
Book SynopsisFabrizio Baldassarri and Craig Martin's volume sheds new light on the understudied Italian Renaissance scholar, Andrea Cesalpino and the diverse fields he wrote on. Contributors cover the multiple traditions that characterize Cesalpino's complex natural philosophy and medical theories, taking in epistemology, demonology, mineralogy, and botany.By moving beyond the established influence of Aristotle's texts on his work,
Andrea Cesalpino and Renaissance Aristotelianism reflects the rich influences of Platonism, alchemy, and Galenism. Cesalpino's relation to the new sciences of the 17th century are traced through his direct influences, on Galileo, botany, and blood circulation. In combining Cesalpino's reception of these traditions alongside his connections to early modern science, this book provides a vital case study of Renaissance Aristotelianism.
Trade ReviewThis volume provides an engaging series of studies that set Andrea Cesalpino’s philosophical and medical writings within the context of sixteenth-century thought. They show that his allegiance to Aristotelian assumptions did not prevent him from pursuing new lines of enquiry and coming to different solutions.
* David Lines, Professor of Renaissance Philosophy and Intellectual History, University of Warwick, UK *
Philosopher and physician, botanist and naturalist, Andrea Cesalpino engaged in many of the most contentious natural philosophical debates of the sixteenth century. The contributors to this volume unravel his complex strands of thought, draw connections within and across his works, and reveal Cesalpino’s centrality to early modern intellectual history. * Hannah Marcus, John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University, USA *
Table of ContentsAndrea Cesalpino. An Introduction,
Fabrizio Baldassarri (University of Venice, Italy) and Craig Martin (University of Venice, Italy) Part I. Philosophy 1. Andrea Cesalpino’s Epistemology,
Marco Sgarbi (Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy) 2. Philosophy, Medicine and Humanism in Cesalpino’s Investigation into Demons,
Craig Martin (University of Venice, Italy) 3. Plato and Andrea Cesalpino’s Aristotelianism: A Revealing Marginality,
Eva del Soldato (University of Pennsylvania, USA) 4. Cesalpino on Sensitive Powers and the Question of Divine Immanence,
Andreas Blank (Klagenfurt University, Austria) 5. Andrea Cesalpino and the Rejection of the Celestial Spheres in Seventeenth-Century University of Edinburgh,
David McOmish (Ca’ Foscari Venice, Italy) Part II. Natural Philosophy 6. Cesalpino’s (Aristotelian) Philosophy of Plants: A Science of Botany in the Renaissance,
Fabrizio Baldassarri (University of Venice, Italy) 7. Aristotelian Metaphysics of the Vegetative Soul and Early Modern Plant Physiology: Comparison between Plant Functions in Aristotle, Pseudo-Aristotle, and Cesalpino,
Corentin Tresnie and Quentin Hiernaux (both FNRS University of Brussels, Belgium) 8. Paratextual Debates in
De plantis (1583): On the best Form of Botanical Prose, Garden and Things, and the Author-Figure of Cesalpino,
Julia Heideklang (Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany) 9. Cesalpino’s Mineralogy between Meteorology and Chymistry,
Hiro Hirai (Columbia University, USA) Part III. Medicine 10. Anatomy and Practice: Andrea Cesalpino’s
Praxis universae artis medicae,
R. Allen Shotwell (Ivy Tech Community College, USA) 11. Simple and Compound Drugs in Late Renaissance Medicine: The Pharmacology of Andrea Cesalpino (1593),
Elisabeth Moreau (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) 12. Cesalpino’s Theory of Disease between Galenism and Renaissance Neoplatonism:
De morbo gallico in Context,
Carmen Schmechel (Freie University of Berlin, Germany) Index
