Renaissance Interpretations of Life in Heaven and Earth
Organized by Hiro Hirai and Monica Azzolini
At the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (San Diego, USA, 4-6 April 2013)
Contact: Hiro Hirai hhirai2@gmail.com
Session 1
Chair, Monica Azzolini (University of Edinburgh)
1. “The Matter of Life, the Life of Matter: Understanding and Rethinking the ‘Activities Common to the Soul and the Body’ in the Renaissance”
Roberto Lo Presti (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Aristotle introduced his Parva Naturalia project in the first chapter of his De Sensu et Sensato. He emphasized the necessity of combining theoretical research on nature per se with a different kind of investigation on the activities and conditions that are “common to the soul and the body.” This passage is a key to understanding his account of the relationship between bodily activities and psychic faculties and, more generally, of the conception of living body as “ensouled matter.” This paper will trace the ways in which the notion of “activities common to the soul and the body” was interpreted in some Renaissance commentaries on De Sensu. Special attention will be paid to the interactions among the ‘medical/empirical’ and ‘theoretical/philosophical’ issues in these commentaries.
2. “Matter and Nutrition in Jean Riolan’s Commentary on Fernel’s Physiology”
Elisabeth Moreau (Free University of Brussels)
Jean Riolan the Elder (1539-1605), dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, is known to have participated in the Parisian controversy between Galenists and Paracelsians at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He provided a critical commentary on Jean Fernel’s work, starting with a scholion to the Physiologia, in the Commentarii in Sex Posteriores Physiologiae Fernelii Libros (Paris, 1577), which was reedited in his posthumous Opera Omnia (Paris, 1610). The aim of this paper is to explore Riolan’s assessment of the digestion of food, particularly with respect to the Galenic and Avicennian concept of radical or primitive moisture and the role of the secondary humors (ros, gluten, cambium) in nutrition. It will examine the different degrees of concoction assigned to the secondary nutritive humors, presiding over the transformation from food via chylum, from chylum to blood, and from blood to the substance of the part of the human body.
3. “Renaissance Embryology and Astrology after Pico”
Hiro Hirai (Radboud University Nijmegen)
The traditional relationship between medicine and astrology was transformed during the Renaissance. A major factor of this change was the criticism formulated by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494). In his posthumous work Disputations against Judicial Astrology (Bologna, 1496), he rejected the divinatory aspects of astrology while accepting its physical dimensions, which can be qualified as “natural astrology.” According to him, celestial bodies produce their effects only by physical means such as motion, light and heat. The field of embryology received a direct impact from Pico’s new theory. This paper will take up the case of a lesser-known philosophical embryology published in Italy during the 1560s by Sebastiano Paparella who taught theoretical medicine at Pisa and Perugia. Under the strong influence of Pico, he tried to restore cosmic bonds, which could bridge the gap between heaven and seeds in animal and human generation.
Session 2
Chair, Hiro Hirai (Radboud University Nijmegen)
4. “Julius Caesar Scaliger on Plants, Species, and the Ordained Power of God”
Andreas Blank (University of Paderborn)
Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558) suggests that plants can come into being even if they belong to a plant species that did not previously exist. At the same time, he holds that God could not have created a more perfect world. Does the emergence of a new species not imply that the world was not the best possible world from the beginning? I will explore a set of metaphysical ideas that could provide Scaliger with a solution to this problem: (1) his notion of a plurality of substantial forms in every living being, and (2) his notion of ordained divine power. Scaliger explains the generation of new species in terms of a development of subordinate substantial forms into dominant substantial forms. Previously existing essences of plant parts become essences of plants. In this way, Scaliger avoids positing the appearance of new essences, thus preserving the best possible world thesis.
5. “Cardano vs. Scaliger on the World-Soul”
Kuni Sakamoto (University of Tokyo)
In his Timaeus, Plato presented a doctrine that posits the world as a living organism with its own soul. This idea of the World-Soul became a popular philosophical topic in the latter half of the fifteenth century, mainly due to the revival of Platonism by Marsilio Ficino (1433–99). The sixteenth century also saw many supporters of this idea. Among them was the Milanese physician Girolamo Cardano (1501–76), who assigned to the soul a pivotal place in his world-system. His idea, however, was immediately subject to criticism by another Italian physician. Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558) accused him of conceiving the World-Soul in a philosophically untenable manner. Distilling the focal point of their conflict, I will illustrate the two philosophers’ contrasting viewpoints, which revolved around the question as to how many active principles should be recognized in nature.
6. “Cosmic Love, Female Matter and Medicine in Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore”
Cecilia Kapoor (Pace University)
This paper examines how Leone Ebreo (ca 1460–1523), a leading Jewish physician, philosopher and poet of the Italian Renaissance, drew upon Platonic, Aristotelian-Galenic and Cabalistic doctrines for his elaboration of cosmic love in the Dialoghi d’amore. As this paper will show, in order to describe a cosmic love that encompasses both Heaven and Earth, Ebreo, following in the footsteps of the humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), deploys a language of love that, due to its conceptually flexible nature, can bridge the ontological gulf between physical and metaphysical. A close reading of the text will bring to the fore a cluster of medical concepts that together inform and “scientifically” substantiate Ebreo’s hermeneutics of desire: humoral theory, the theory of complexio, love sickness (amor hereos) and medical astrology. Lastly, this paper will show how Ebreo, by polarizing the universe into male-female and by eroticizing that polarization, envisions Heaven (male) and Earth (female) to have real generative and reproductive powers.
Session 3
Chair, Jennifer Rampling (University of Cambridge)
7. “Were the Heavens Alive in the Renaissance?: Ficino’s and Pico’s Contrasting Views on the Animation of the Heavens”
H. Darrel Rutkin (Stanford University)
In 2013, we often ask if there is life—intelligent or otherwise—in the heavens, but almost never whether the heavens themselves are actually alive or animated, that is, infused somehow with a soul, the anima mundi or some such entity. This was not the case in the Renaissance. Although Aristotelians normally answered no to this question, Marsilio Ficino took a decidedly Platonic turn when he answered the question positively, insistently and consistently in a broad range of works over his entire philosophical career. By contrast, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Ficino’s younger contemporary, began by embracing the new Platonic position but returned to the Aristotelian fold in his later works. In this talk, I will compare and contrast Ficino’s solid and consistent position with the changing trajectory of Pico’s views over the course of his short but intense career.
8. “Beyond Exhalations: The Sixteenth-Century Italian Debate on Comets and Their Matter”
Dario Tessicini (University of Durham)
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, celestial phaenomena, and comets in particular, were the subject of considerable interest in Italy, as elsewhere in Europe. The comet of 1577 (as well as other celestial appearances) originated a wide, although little investigated, debate that crossed the entire peninsula and sparked some radical reconsiderations of the Aristotelian doctrine of exhalations. This paper will focus on a sample of Italian works that presented vitalistic metaphors and/or organicistic explanations of the physical processes at the origin of comets.
9. “A New Star and a Novel Philosophy: The Challenge of Change in Early Modern Astronomy”
Patrick J. Boner (Johns Hopkins University)
The ‘new star’ of 1604 was a great spectacle that inspired many scholars to fathom novel natural philosophies. In this paper, I explore the accounts of astronomers who deployed the star in favor of new views about the nature of the cosmos. My analysis focuses on Johannes Kepler and his circle of peers who actively exchanged observations and opinions about the new luminary. As debate raged over the cause and origin of the star, Kepler and his contemporaries confronted the consequences of change beyond the sublunary sphere. For some, the solution involved applying ancient philosophy and a system of ‘living physics’ that assigned to the heavens the same cycle of generation and corruption that occurred on earth. This was not only a rejection of the radical division of the celestial and terrestrial spheres, but a re-affirmation of the ancient principle of universal perfection.
Session 4
Chair, Patrick J. Boner (Johns Hopkins University)
10. “When Ghosts Become Visible: Natural and Supernatural Beings in Paracelsus’ Cosmology”
Dane T. Daniel (Wright State University)
In his cosmological system, Paracelsus addressed the phenomenon of ghosts along with a plethora of invisible entities such as nymphs, demons and angels as subjects of natural philosophy. He also assigned habitants to a “celestial realm” as subjects of “adept philosophy.” What were his sources for these unusual beings? I will explore his invocations or exegeses of Biblical passages, Neo-Platonic authors, medieval alchemists, and folklore literature to begin addressing the question. As Paracelsus explains in his major work, Astronomia Magna (1537/38), ghosts are simply the sidereal bodies of humans that have not yet returned to their source, i.e. the stars. In nature there are indeed a number of these “natural” sidereal entities, which differ from what he sees as “celestial” beings, e.g., resurrected people. What is the difference in composition of “natural” bodies and “supernatural” beings, and how are the “sidereal” and “celestial” sensed and/or accessed differently?
11. “Life in the Blood: Johann Ernst Burggrav’s Lamp of Life and Death”
Vera Keller (University of Oregon)
For decades, Johann Ernst Burggrav’s Biolychnium or Lamp of Life and Death (1610, 1611, 1629 and 1630) provoked debate about the relationship between life and blood. Burggrav was a physician, alchemical editor, and an associate of Johann Hartmann at Marburg. Based on his views concerning the vital flame that burned within blood, Burggrav claimed that an individual’s health could be judged through a flame kept burning with their blood. The Lamp provoked a variety of responses, rebuttals, and further experimentation. The discoveries of William Harvey renewed these debates, when even some of those who denied Burggrav’s ability to build such a lamp (such as Walter Charleton), adopted his terminology of the Biolychnium for new theories concerning blood and vitality. This paper explores Burggrav’s vital philosophy and its role in continuing debates.
12. “Conception of Life in Francis Bacon’s De viis mortis”
Kaz Shibata (University of Tokyo)
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was keenly interested in the prolongation of the human lifespan and tried to establish its theoretical foundation. The conception of life and death was thus important in his natural philosophy. A small work entitled On the Ways of Death (De viis mortis), composed intermittently in 1610s, was one of the early writings in which Bacon addressed these biological phenomena and developed his first speculations on the prolongation of life. Although this treatise is a key to understanding his biological ideas in general, it has often escaped the attention of historians. The present paper will examine Bacon’s discussion on the preservation of non-living natural beings (wood, water, fruits, etc.). Why did he focus on these matters? How did he perceive their relationship with the human lifespan and its prolongation? These questions are crucial to grasp his early conception of life.
