Natural Philosophy in the Renaissance

First published Tue Apr 14, 2015; substantive revision Mon Sep 18, 2023

Natural philosophy, as distinguished from metaphysics and mathematics,is traditionally understood to encompass a wide range of subjectswhich Aristotle included in the physical sciences. According to thisclassification, natural philosophy is the science of those beingswhich undergo change and are independent of human beings. This vastfield of inquiry was described in Aristotelian treatises such asPhysics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption,Meteorology, History of Animals, On the Parts of Animals, On theGeneration of Animals, On the Soul (whose Renaissance receptionis not discussed in the present entry); the so-calledparvanaturalia (other minor writings); and someapocrypha(e.g., theProblemata), which were taught in the universitiesin the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. During the Renaissance,despite the enduring centrality of the Aristotelian paradigm for thediscipline, natural philosophy was enriched and expanded by a numberof further approaches. By the end of the sixteenth century naturalphilosophy was no longer purely identified with the Aristoteliansystem or a standard university curriculum. At the same time, theproliferation of new contexts and ways of learning did notautomatically eliminate older ones, and this fusion contributed to thebirth of modern science in a period of religious and politicalupheaval.

1. Defining Renaissance Natural Philosophy

Renaissance natural philosophy defies easy definition, sincedescriptions of it may oversimplify, either by reducing it to itsconnections with medieval science or, alternatively, forcing it into ateleology that culminates in the Scientific Revolution of theseventeenth century. Hence, there have been two opposing tendencies inscholarship: one which conflates the natural philosophy of thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the variety practiced in theMiddle Ages, even going so far as to interpret the Renaissance as aperiod of conservatism in this regard; another which emphasizes therole of Renaissance natural philosophy as a “precursor” ofmodern science, even at the cost of ignoring or removing itsconnections to disciplines today considered pseudo-scientific, such asphysiognomy, astrology, and magic. Recent contributions, however, havehelped to outline the characteristics of Renaissance naturalphilosophy in their own terms. Medieval natural philosophy was usuallybased in thecorpus aristotelicum and practiced inuniversities. Yet this did not mean that its approach was purelystatic or regressive; on the contrary, thinkers like Jean Buridan,Biagio Pelacani, and Nicole Oresme took Aristotelian physics andmechanics in new directions in medieval Europe. Nevertheless, thenature of medieval universities was such that teaching was heavilycontrolled by authorities, and especially outside of Italy bothmetaphysics and theology exercised a strong influence. This imposedsome limitation to the directions in which scientific theorizationcould advance. Paradoxically, it was the return of another, rivalschool of thought—Platonism—that ultimately allowed formore freedom within the Aristotelian tradition. Though Plato’sphilosophy had never completely disappeared during the course of theMiddle Ages, the consolidation of a Neoplatonic school in thefifteenth century led to the clear distinctions between the sphereswhich properly belonged to the two great thinkers of the ancientworld. While Plato was regarded as a theologian and master of themetaphysical realities, Aristotle was seen as an investigator of thesublunar world subject to generation and corruption. The recovery ofthis ancient dichotomy had the effect of undermining the longstandingties between Aristotelianism and Scholasticism, and opened up newspaces for philosophy unimpaired by metaphysical limitations.Moreover, an open dialogue with the Platonic tradition, caused severalprofessors to question Aristotle’s coherence and reliability. Atthe same time, also Platonism and other brands of ancientphilosophy—Stoicism, Skepticism, andEpicureanism—stimulated reflection on the natural world indifferent ways, also in terms of method. The application of theseideas to various fields of inquiry gave Renaissance natural thought adistinctive identity, forged in continuous dialectic withAristotelianism itself. Aristotelianism therefore represented thedriving force behind Renaissance philosophy of nature, both because ofits plurality of approaches and internal debates, and also because itserved as the polemical target of those who challenged the traditionalparadigm of university teaching: both followers and adversaries ofAristotle had constantly to negotiate with his authoritative legacy,and manipulate it. Finally, other factors of a non-speculativecharacter also had an impact on natural philosophy: technologicalinnovations such as printing, the telescope and the microscope,geographical discoveries, and developments within the universitiesthemselves, such as the institution of botanical gardens.

2. Natural Philosophy and theCurriculum

2.1 Universities and Textbooks

The Aristotelian naturalcorpus covered a wide range ofsubjects in a number of separate texts: while thePhysics wasa sort of general work—which appeared to some fifteenth- andsixteenth-century authors more metaphysical, even overlapping with theMetaphysics—the other treatises represented differentsections of natural philosophy on particulars. The success andinfluence of Aristotelian natural philosophy was due to its centralityto university teaching, where it was favored because it covered everytopic, like an encyclopedia. Few attempts were made to reconsiderwhich texts represented the core of the study of natural philosophy inthe universities; one remarkable exception was Pierre de laRamée (1515–1572), who put a distinctive emphasis onparticular sciences at the expense of study of thePhysics.Physics, along withOn the Heavens, Meteorology, andOn Generation and Corruption, was the main reference fornatural philosophy in the traditionalcurricula of theFaculty of Arts. Universities—especially inItaly—appointed many lecturers in natural philosophy, whousually received high salaries. In the second half of the sixteenthcentury, separate chairs of botany, mathematics, and even chemistry(in Mantua and Germany), were established. Aristotelian texts weretraditionally studied according to the commentaries by Averroes (whichprovided the internal partition of the texts into sections).

Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the works of other,more ancient commentators on Aristotle were also adopted: those ofAlexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius were particularly popular, thefirst because of its radical mortalism, the second for its Neoplatonicand conciliatory tendencies. The rediscovery of the ancientcommentators was accompanied by an increasing reliance on the Greektexts in universities, despite the enduring predominance of medievalLatin material. New commentaries also appeared alongside the ancientones: practically all of the most prominent professors composed theirown commentaries to the Aristotelian natural texts, in particularbetween the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Usually thesecommentaries followed the texts according to the Averroisticdivisions, but sometimes they were organized inquaestiones.

Furthermore, the advent of printing made a large selection oftextbooks more widely available: some of them were very shortintroductions for younger students, others werecompendia,others paraphrases (like those by Jacques Lefèvred’Etaples (1455–1536), printed for the first time in1492), and still others dialogues (again, Lefèvred’Etaples created some of the most significant examples). Otherpopular works used for teaching were abridged versions of theAristotelian treatises reduced toconclusiones, like thepopularTextus abbreviatus philosophiae naturalis by theFrench theologian Thomas Bricot (d. 1516). There were also manydifferent textbooks, which generally followed canonical organizations:either they explained the Aristotelian works according to their orderin thecorpus, or they highlighted subjects like principles,causes, movement, infinity, place, void, and time. The famousCommentarii Conimbricenses, which from 1594 on became thestandard text in the Jesuitcurriculum, contains a wholecourse on natural philosophy organized as a commentary of theAristotelian corpus. Particularly after the second half of thesixteenth century, vernacular treatments of Aristotelian naturalphilosophy also began to circulate, such as the translations byAntonio Brucioli (1498–1566), the paraphrases by AlessandroPiccolomini (1508–1579), the summaries by Jean de Champaignac(fl. 1595) and Scipion Dupleix (1569–1661), and the works byCesare Crivellati (1553–1640), the latter explicitly addressedto university students.

2.2 Natural Philosophy’s Rivalries and Interactions

Natural philosophy interacted with many other disciplines. The closerelationship between natural philosophy and medicine had already beenstressed by Aristotle himself at the beginning ofOn Sense andSensible (436a19–436b2). Medicine often competed withnatural philosophy within the universities: philosophy was acurricular requirement for those who wanted to study medicine in theItalian universities and many of the greatest Renaissance naturalphilosophers were also physicians (e.g., Alessandro Achillini(1463–1512) and Simone Porzio (1496–1554); there were alsoprofessional physicians who wrote on natural philosophy, such asBalthassar Pisanellus (fl. 1559) and Daniel Furlanus (d. 1600)).Ubi desinit philosophus (orphysicus),incipitmedicus (“where the philosopher ends, the physicianbegins”): so went a proverb which implied an ambiguous boundarybetween the two disciplines: on the one hand, it reflected the need tomove beyond the theory represented by philosophy and into the actualpractice of medicine; on the other, it affirmed the idea that naturalphilosophy was necessary in order to prepare for medical studies. Fromthis perspective, natural philosophy represented either a merepreparatory stage on the way to the more perfect and concreteknowledge of medicine, or, alternatively, medicine was subordinate tonatural philosophy (others, like the philosopher Jacopo Zabarella(1533–1589), preferred to distinguish natural philosophy frommedicine because these two disciplines did not share subject andmethod).

The Renaissance debate over the superiority of Aristotle or Galen waspart of this rivalry: Aristotle was regarded by physicians as animportant authority because of his philosophical system, but Galen hadoffered in his works more precise observations of the human body.Nonetheless, since many points of their disagreement (e.g., thelocalization of the brain functions) were merely founded onspeculation, some doctors preferred to demonstrate the harmony betweenAristotle and Galen in order to overcome this impasse.

Another discipline often compared to natural philosophy was astrology.The Jesuit Benito Pereira (1536–1610) stated that naturalphilosophy is different from astrology because, among other reasons,the former studies thingsa priori, the latteraposteriori. Pereira also claimed that natural philosophy was notcapable of delineating its own sphere of inquiry, something which waspossible for other disciplines such as logic and metaphysics.

University courses on thePhysics traditionally began with alecture on ethical themes. This arrangement was inspired byAverroes’ proem to the text, which argued for the moralperfection of the speculative man. The connection between ethics andnatural philosophy also appeared in discussions of subjects like theimmortality of the soul or the human will, and consequently ethicaldiscussions could occupy large sections both inreportationesof lessons and commentaries.

3. Revising theCurriculum: Academies, Philology, and Botanical Gardens

Outside of universities and schools, there were also other placeswhere natural philosophy was cultivated, particularly in academies andlearned societies. Even in literary societies such as theAccademia Fiorentina (1541), patronized by Duke Cosimode’Medici and his descendants, scientific matters (e.g., alchemyor spontaneous generation) were occasionally debated, often in thecontext of commentaries on the poems of Dante and Petrarch. TheAccademia dei Lincei, founded in 1603, on the other hand, wasexclusively interested in the sciences: as their statute dictated, theLincei had no interest in any controversy which was notscientific or mathematical, and they avoided involvement in politicalmatters. TheAccademia dei Lincei, like theAccademia delCimento after it (1657), was founded and patronized by members ofthe aristocracy, but never became as well-grounded as other learnedsocieties, such as the Royal Society (1661) or theAcadémieRoyale (1666), which were directly sponsored by the state (theAcadémie Royale even received financial support fromthe treasury). Both of these latter institutions developed out of moreinformal associations and they encouraged collaboration among theirmembers; they also explicitly endorsed the open and public exchange ofideas, as opposed to the secretive practices of groups like theLincei. Their members gave public demonstrations of theirwork, and the secrecy which had characterized scientific pursuit forcenturies was eventually abandoned in favor of a new empiricalapproach.

Nonetheless, even when they did not sponsor academies, Renaissancelords and patrons often had a particular interest in scientific worksand treatises, especially those devoted to subjects of military value(such as the works on metalworking by Vannoccio Biringuccio and GeorgeAgricola, or Niccolò Tartaglia’s treatise on ballistics,in the mid-sixteenth century), or booklets dedicated toparvanaturalia, which were intended as forms of intellectualentertainment and usually contained descriptions ofmirandanaturae or astrological predictions. Exceptional natural eventssuch as earthquakes—a famous one occurred in Pozzuoli in1537—led to the publication of a number of short treatises thatinterpreted the calamity as either a natural phenomenon or as a signsent by the celestial influences: these works were particularly soughtafter by powerful men, who wanted to be reassured about thesignificance of natural events and their possible consequences.Several Renaissance rulers cultivated an interest in sciences likealchemy, and patronized or participated first-hand in investigationsof the natural world: disciplines like zoology, which depended on thecollection of material, information, and drawings, relied particularlyheavily on the sponsorship of the wealthy and powerful. The zoologicaland botanical works and catalogues which, though composed byuniversity professors, started from the 1540s to circulate aroundEurope, were often addressed to or sponsored by rulers, who had themeans to employ artists and other specialists needed to complete thesecostly volumes. Drawings were not simply ornaments to a text, but anecessity for accurate classification of plants and animals.

The same desire for accuracy that motivated the production ofscientific images also led to more rigorous editions and translationsof classic scientific texts, whose impact was magnified by theprinting press. Between 1495 and 1498 Aldus Manutius printed the“Greek Aristotle” in Venice, an edition prepared by a teamwhich included the humanist-physicians Niccolò Leoniceno andThomas Linacre under the guidance of another physician, FrancescoCavalli. Consequently, Manutius’s edition, which incorporatedsignificant improvements of the Aristotelian texts such as thoseproposed years before by Theodor Gaza for theHistoriaAnimalium, favored the scientific works by Aristotle and did notinclude, for example, eitherRhetoric orPoetics.Yet the scientific text that received the most attention fromphilologists was Pliny’sNatural History. Between thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries Pliny’s work was emended byphilologists such as Ermolao Barbaro, Angelo Poliziano, andNiccolò Leoniceno—and also translated several times inthe vernaculars—in increasingly sophisticated versions. Both theeditions and the translations were intended to allow for a correctunderstanding of the text, which was often used by doctors andapothecaries. The same thing happened with Dioscorides’Materia medica, a text that unlike the encyclopedicNatural History was plainly addressed to a medical audience,and which was then repeatedly emended and translated by professionalphysicians and natural philosophers. Yet, also authors like Virgil,Horace and Ovid were common presences in discussions about botany, andeven a philological evaluation of the text of theBible couldprovide material to natural philosophers.

The foundation of botanical gardens in Pisa, Padua, and Florence(1544–1545), and then in Bologna, Leiden, Oxford, Montpellier,and Germany testify to the fact that empirical knowledge wasincreasingly considered a necessity even in the universities, despitethe fact that even at the end of the sixteenth century chairs inbotany, such as the one occupied by Andrea Cesalpino (1519–1603)in Pisa, came with lower salaries than the ones given to their“speculative colleagues” who taught natural philosophy ormedicine. The aforementioned catalogues of animals and plants, likethose published by Pierre Belon (1517–1564), Guillaume Rondelet(1507–1566), and Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), were thusa combination of received authority and empirical observation, basedon 1) a philological and critical knowledge of the classical texts,not a passive reading of them; and 2) direct observations andconversations not only with erudite peers and colleagues, but alsowith the so-called “invisibletechnicians”—fishermen, sailors, and peasants who hadfirst-hand knowledge of the relevant subjects and provided scientistswith important pieces of information. Not by chance, in alittle-explored field like the study of minerals, the most significantcontributions came from self-described “men withoutletters” (meaning not Latinate), such as Leonardo da Vinci(1452–1519) and the potter Bernard Palissy (1510–1589),who identified fossils as the result of organic processes rather thanabstract virtues.

These empirical approaches were also stimulated by the Europeandiscovery of the Americas and other continents, which contained plantsand animals never known or never described by classical authoritieslike Aristotle and Pliny. The new knowledge brought by travelers andexplorers helped debunk erroneous doctrines advocated by Aristotle,such as the uninhabitability of the torrid zone fromMeteorology 362b 6–9: a major exponent of RenaissanceAristotelianism, Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), publicly mockedthe Philosopher during his classes when discussing this passage, andsupported his position by referring to the direct, recent observationsof the navigator Antonio Pigafetta.

The shift from a text-based approach to the study of nature founded onthe study of a limited number of authors, to a new one based on anenlarged encyclopedia and, above all, direct observation, reached itsfull expression at the time of Galileo Galilei; but it was alreadyperceptible in the writings of Lorenzo Valla (circa1406–1457)—who appealed to common sense against theabsurdity of some of the Aristotelian tenets—and in those ofLeonardo da Vinci, who invoked a virtuous interaction between scienceand practice. When Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) stated that helearned more from the anatomy of an ant or an herb than from any bookever written, he was simply expressing in a beautiful and poetic forma shared methodological creed.

4. Aristotelian Tenets, Platonic Tenets, and More

The principal tenets of the Aristotelian natural philosophy were: thedoctrine of form and matter, the four causes, the rigid separation ofthe world into opposed spheres, and the finite nature of the universe.During the Renaissance, these precepts were both defended and revisedby Aristotelian professors, or challenged by others who sought todismantle traditional philosophy. While these new philosophers couldrely on new evidence, methods, and observations to define the natureof the universe, in other cases the rejection of Aristoteliandoctrines and their substitution with new paradigms was mainly basedon speculative arguments.

4.1 Principles and Matter

4.1.1 Principles

According to Aristotle, if the sublunar world was characterized bymutability, the supralunar world was—on thecontrary—absolutely immutable. The fundamental principles ofAristotelian physics were in fact matter, form, and privation, and thenatural sublunar world was therefore the location where according tothese principles generation and corruption took place. Independentphilosophers offered alternatives to these principles and to theAristotelian hylemorphic apparatus. In order to describe nature withinits own limits, Bernardino Telesio (1509–1588)—a staunchopponent of Aristotelianism—defended a different set ofprinciples which had already been proposed by authors such GirolamoCardano (1501–1576) and Girolamo Fracastoro (circa1476–1553), and which he argued was based on data gathered fromexperience rather than on arbitrary constructions. These alternativeprinciples were passive matter and active force, the latterdistinguished into heat and cold. It was the interplay—orrather, the battle—between these opposite forces that broughtabout the natural world. Since every natural being depends on theinteraction between cold and heat, it must know what is necessary forits survival: therefore everything, including the forces themselves,possesses sensation, which was not related to the faculties of thesoul, as in Aristotelian psychology. This connection betweensensus and self-preservation was also advocated by TommasoCampanella, who emphasized its importance for natural magic.Telesio’s polemical refusal of Aristotle and his call forphysical inquiry made within natural limits was appreciated andpraised even by those who recognized the contradictions in histheories. Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597), who attacked Aristotlefrom a Platonic perspective in hisNova de UniversisPhilosophia (1591), rebuked Telesio for the latter’s claimto have relied exclusively on the senses and rejected reason: hepointed out that, in reality, Telesio did rely on metaphysicalarguments, though he claimed to deny them (for his part, Patrizibelieved that natural philosophy requires metaphysical tools to fillin its gaps). The same recognition of too much reliance on metaphysicsdrove Francis Bacon (1561–1626) to reject Telesio’s viewsin favor of experimental empiricism and of a full endorsement of thetestimony of sensory perception.

4.1.2 The Nature of Matter

Most Aristotelian interpreters believed matter to bepropenihil, pure potentiality, while others believed that it possesseda certain degree of reality and actuality. The discussion on thenature of matter was further complicated by the suggestions offered byother traditions of thought, Platonism above all. According toMarsilio Ficino (1433–1499) in hisPlatonic Theology,prime matter had an existence which is not dependent upon form.Closely following theTimaeus, he claimed that matter cantherefore be intelligible, though in a weaker way. Giordano Bruno(1548–1600) proposed an even more radical departure fromtraditional views of the passivity of matter. In theDe la causa,principio et uno, Bruno affirmed that matter is an activeprinciple, not passive. Matter contains within itself every form, bothcorporeal and incorporeal, and can be described as a kind of infinitelife. Bruno’s conception of matter also served as the basis forhis cosmological views (see below), and in particular for his claimthat the universe is infinite. A few years later, Tommaso Campanellareturned to a more traditional position. In theDel senso dellecose e della magia (printed in 1620) he argued for the synonymitybetween matter and body, and against the identification of matter withthe Aristotelianprope nihil, though he did emphasize itspassivity: matter receives forms from external agents and does notproduce them from within itself.

Closely related to these problems was Aristotle’s doctrine ofprime matter, which had controversial implications: as matter waseternal, so was the world, and therefore the Christian dogma of thecreation of the world was untenable. Scholastic philosophers had longstruggled with this subject during the Middle Ages, and the mostinteresting developments during the Renaissance were driven by theconfrontation between Aristotelianism and Platonism. Plato, in theTimaeus, had clearly spoken of a God-creator, and once againhis doctrines were adopted by authors anxious to establish a newphilosophical foundation for Christianity. Bessarion (d. 1472), forexample, admitted that according to Plato matter was eternal, but thathe distinguished it clearly from the creator, who possesses a superioreternity. In similar fashion, Marsilio Ficino expressly describedprime matter as created and therefore not subject to generation andcorruption. Aristotelians were not always afraid, however, to arguefor the eternity of the prime matter: Francesco Vimercato(1512–1569), in his posthumousDe rerum principiis, isthe most remarkable example. As late as the beginning of theseventeenth century, the debate continued: Cesare Crivellati composeda dialogue (1617) between Plato and Aristotle in which the masterrebukes his unfaithful student for teaching such an impious doctrine.On the other hand, there were also authors who attempted to establishan accord between Plato and Aristotle on this sensitive issue: a goodexample is theDe naturae philosophia seu de Platonis etAristotelis consensione (1554) by Sebastian Fox Morcillo(1526–1560), in which the Spanish philosopher compares thedoctrines of theTimaeus and thePhysics, andemphasizes the limits of both in front of the perfection ofreligion.

Other thinkers instead had a pragmatic approach to prime matter:alchemists like the Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493–1541)sought to find a principle to which every substance could be reduced.Though openly challenging traditional university teaching, Paracelsusdid not reject canonical motifs. For example, he relied on the fourelements (air, fire, water, earth), but he also proposed a new triad:sulfur, mercury, and salt. Yet, even this proposal was not asiconoclastic as it appears, since it was partially founded on theAristotelian doctrine of the formation of metals contained in theMeteorology (341b 6ff.). Nonetheless, by emphasizing theprocesses of association and dissociation of substances, Paracelsusoffered an important contribution to the transformation of alchemyinto chemistry (even if the two terms were often intended asinterchangeable). Gradually chemistry separated from physics,understood as the science of bodies subject to movement, andpositioned itself as the science of bodies associated and dissociated.Johann Baptist Van Helmont (1579–1644), who opposed theParacelsian principles, developed a corpuscular doctrine of matter, avariant of atomistic theory. Atomism in the Renaissance was typicallyrelated to the Neoplatonic concept ofsemina and to theEpicurean philosophy, and was usually advocated by radicalanti-Aristotelian thinkers like Giordano Bruno. And while it is truethat Aristotle rejected atomism and the existence of the void, therewere ways to argue for a Peripatetic version of atomism.

Some medieval philosophers admitted the existence ofminimanaturalia, the limits beyond which form is not conserved. Thedoctrine of theminima was intended to resolve a problemraised by Aristotle inOn Generation and Corruption (327a30–328b 24), namely, that of the necessity of finding aphilosophical justification for combination, an intermediatephenomenon between generation and corruption. Over the course of theRenaissance the doctrine ofminima naturalia was furtherelaborated by authors like Agostino Nifo (circa 1469–circa 1539)and Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558). Scaliger granted aconsistency to theminima, making them not mere limits, butreal physical components that cannot be further divided. Furthermore,he rejected traditional atomism, because it did not achieve thecontinuity of the corpuscles which constitute a body. Despite theiropposition to Peripateticism, the corpuscularism of Van Helmont andDaniel Sennert (1572–1637) was rooted in this tradition.Sennert, in particular, was unable to reject the Aristotelian conceptof form, and aimed instead to establish a concord betweenAristotelianism and atomism. Even in a work programmatically entitledPhilosophia Naturalis adversus Aristotelem (1621), SebastianBasson—who defended corpuscularism—denied the existence ofthe void and rejected a mechanization of the natural world. It wasGalileo Galilei who made a bold departure from the qualitativebackground of Aristotelian matter, defending a mechanistic form ofatomism in which atoms did not have dimensions. Despite the attemptsof Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) to conciliate it withChristianity, atomism bothered traditionalists also for itstheological implications, both large (the teleological vision of theworld) and small (transubstantiation). Even René Descartes(1596–1650) came under attack for this reason. Debate over theexistence of the void was also lively throughout the seventeenthcentury, largely because of the experimental work of EvangelistaTorricelli (1608–1647), Valeriano Magni (1586–1661), OttoVon Guericke (1602–1686), and Robert Boyle (1627–1691),who opposed the traditional views of the so-called“plenists”.

4.2 Old Cosmologies, New Cosmologies

The rigid peripatetic division of the universe into two differentparts—one immutable and made of crystalline spheres, situatedbetween the fixed stars and the moon, the other mutable, under themoon—was also related in the Aristotelian paradigm to theconcept of the natural sublunar world formed by the four elements:fire, air, water, and earth. Every element behaves differently,according to its so-called “natural movement”. Lightelements, such as fire and air, always tend to go upward, while heavyelements, such as water and earth, move downward following arectilinear movement. Every element aims, in fact, to reach its ownnatural place, unless an external force causes a movement opposite toits nature—a “violent movement” (e.g., a stonethrown into the air). In both cases, Aristotelian theory considersmovement as a quality common to all natural things because of theelements which compose them. By contrast, the heavens, since perfectand composed by a single element (aether), are immutable and travel inconstant circular motion around an immovable center represented byEarth. An important corollary to the theory of natural places was thefinite character of the world, because it implied the existence of aunique center (the Earth), while evidently it would not be possiblefor an infinite universe to have a center.

These longstanding paradigms were destined to be challenged from thesixteenth century onward, both from a speculative and an empiricalperspective. Observation ofstellae novae and cometscondemned the crystalline spheres and raised doubts regarding thedoctrine of the immutability of heavens. According to the traditionalAristotelian account, comets were phenomena in the sublunaratmosphere. The great astronomer Johannes Regiomontanus(1436–1476) did not challenge this vision of the cosmos when hecalculated the distance of the 1472 comet by considering the angle ofparallax, but about a century later, the Jesuit Christopher Clavius(1538–1612), observing anova (1572), and Tycho Brahe(1546–1601), observing a comet (1577), both demonstrated thatthe suddenly bright star and the comet must lie beyond the moon, andthat therefore the doctrine of the spheres was false. The demonstratedfluidity of heavens also compromised, more crucially, the doctrine oftheir immutability. Two factors made possible such an achievement: theavailability of better measuring instruments, and a stronger emphasison mathematics. This emphasis on mathematics was probably the mostimportant contribution of Platonism to the development of naturalphilosophy, and in particular astronomy, during the Renaissance.Though it is true that Neoplatonic philosophers had proposedalternatives to the Peripatetic theories on the heavens (e.g.,Marsilio Ficino argued that the heavens were made ofspiritusand rejected the division of the universe into spheres), it was theirinsistence on the importance of geometry and mathematics that helpedopening the way to the quantitative vision of the world, whichgradually replaced the qualitative paradigm connected to theAristotelian tradition.

The decision of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) to propose aheliocentric system, remove the Earth from the center of the universe,and establish a relationship between the distances of the differentplanets from the sun and the amplitude of their orbits was based onmathematical reasoning and the weaknesses of Aristotelian-Ptolemaicsystem in this regard. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) defended theCopernican theory by re-utilizing geometrical arguments fromPlato’sTimaeus, and he also developed other theories(such as the elliptical form of the planetary orbits) founded on thegeometrical structure that he attributed to the universe. Despite thefact that aspects of his method, and in particular theregressus, were essentially Aristotelian, Galileo Galilei(1564–1642) has been often described as a Platonist, insofar asPlatonism endorsed a mathematical approach. Galileo denied the realityof the physical elements of the Aristotelian world and the theory oftheir natural movements, and replaced them with corporeal matter,whose properties and motions could be described in mathematical terms.Furthermore, by relying on new instruments such as the telescope,Galileo was also able to make new observations which revealed theimperfections of the supralunar world. Galileo and the Copernicantheory met with the resistance of the Church, but also of theuniversities, whose professoriate was not eager to renounce one of thecentral pillars of its teaching. On the other hand, the Tychonicsystem elaborated by Brahe, which attempted to conciliate thetraditional Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology with Copernicus,encountered support even among Jesuit scientists.

However, neither mathematics nor fresh observations were capable ofresolving the problem of the nature of the universe: was it finite orinfinite? Is there only one world or do multiple worlds exist?According to the Aristotelians the universe must be finite, because itis impossible to have an infinite body in act, and Copernicus and hisfollowers also endorsed the finitude of the heavens. Theology,however, offered arguments against the finitude of the universe:Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) connected the infinity of God tothe infinity of heavens, and Palingenio Stellato (or PierangeloManzolli, 1500/3–1543 ca.), in hisZodiacus Vitae,compiled themes from different traditions (e.g., the Aristotelianspheres and the Platonic ideas), describing a universe made ofinfinite light in order to celebrate the glory of God. FranciscoSuarez (1548–1617), and a few years later theConimbricenses, also defended the existence of an infinitespace, even if it was only an imaginary one, combining Peripateticdoctrines with theological ones (above all the omnipresence of God,which cannot be limited by a finite space). Giordano Bruno used therelationship between God and His creation to argue for the infinity ofthe world. Bruno’s position was in complete opposition to theAristotelian cosmology: the spheres are broken, there is no hierarchybetween the different parts of the world and no center, and thereforethe natural movements are rejected. Bruno developed his theory ofinfinity not only by relying on metaphysical arguments, but also on aradical revision of the Aristotelian definition of space, which heunderstood as a continuous quantity. Bruno’s proposal provokedreactions all over Europe: Kepler rejected it several times indifferent ways. Nevertheless, Kepler agreed with Bruno’s beliefin the plurality of worlds—a problem which raised theologicalissues because of the question of salvation. TommasoCampanella—an author who denied the infinity of theuniverse—resolved it by arguing that the inhabitants of theother worlds were not men, and therefore did not need to be saved byGod.

4.3 Miracles, Magic, and Physiognomy

In the Middle Ages authors like Pietro of Abano, Nicolas Oresme, andJohn Buridan argued that any phenomenon, in particular those whichwere usually believed to be supernatural or miraculous, could beexplained according to natural principles as the result of hiddencauses. A number of Renaissance thinkers also adopted this approach,including Pietro Pomponazzi. In hisDe incantationibus,Pomponazzi stated that men tend to consider phenomena wondrous whenthey are not able to identify their causes as the work of demons ormiracles. Pomponazzi attributed apparently miraculous events to thepower of imagination, to psychological states or to the influence ofthe stars, since according to the Peripatetic paradigm the immutablefirst mover cannot have direct contact with the mutable sublunarworld, and therefore moves through secondary causes. Nonetheless,despite his claim to speak purelysecundum Aristotelem,Pomponazzi relied on a wider range of readings, including MarsilioFicino. And in making these claims, Pomponazzi encroaches on verysensitive questions of religious faith. In his view, Christianmiracles can be understood in the context of a sort of philosophy ofhistory, founded on the horoscope of religions: when a religionbegins, miracles occur, which are caused by starry influences, andwhen a religion declines, miracles disappear, because starryinfluences are weaker. This paradigm involved a rigid organization ofthe universe, which left little or no space for free will. Pomponazzitook this doctrine to its logical extreme in hisDe fato, awork in which he claimed to endorse Stoicism, while in realityexposing the determinism embedded in the Aristotelian doctrine ofcauses. Other Aristotelians who sought to avoid this determinismusually relied on the moderate position of Alexander of Aphrodisias,who Pomponazzi attacked in the first part of his treatise. WhilePomponazzi reached these conclusions drawing on multiple sources,other authors, such as Gerardus Bucoldianus, Simone Porzio, andLudovico Boccadiferro preferred to rely solely on Aristotle in orderto explain wondrous events like cataclysms or the appearance ofmonstrous creatures, like those described by Ulisse Aldrovandi(1522–1605), who interpreted them as deviations from the courseof nature, or Fortunio Liceti (1577–1657), who preferred to linkthe appearance of monsters to ingenious experiments of nature.

Nevertheless, this approach, which reduced the supernatural to thenatural, was not always coupled with Aristotelianism. On the contrary,it was often directed against Peripatetic doctrines, particularly whenit relied on experimental and empirical observations. The search forthe occult causes of things, which was often related to magicalbeliefs and practices, effectively stimulated new empiricalapproaches: Giovanbattista della Porta (1535–1615) was amongthose who offered natural explanations for exceptional events whilediscarding the Aristotelian paradigm in favor of direct experience, inworks such as theMagiae naturalis sive de miraculis rerumnaturalium. Della Porta insisted on the sympathy and theantipathy of things, which are influenced by celestial virtues, whendealing with topics like optics and magnetism. And theDemagnete of the anti-Aristotelian William Gilbert(1544–1603) mixed experimentation (aimed at the demonstration ofthe rotation and the magnetism of earth) with the belief in theexistence of a soul belonging to the earth. The occult properties ofthings were also explored by other disciplines, such as medicine. JeanFernel (1497–1558) and Girolamo Fracastoro argued that occultproperties could be used to explain diseases and contagions.

The knowledge of the secrets of nature was in fact central to magic, afield which had an ambiguous relationship to natural philosophy. If anatural philosopher wanted to describe and understand nature, apractitioner of magic wanted to investigate it and its occultproperties in order to master it. The Neoplatonic correspondencesbetweenmacrocosmus—the world—andmicrocosmus—man—allow magic to exercise its poweron a reality which was seen in vitalistic and transcendental terms:the book of nature for practitioners of magic was not the same one asthat of the Aristotelians or of Galileo, but it was written with signsand allusions. Magical doctrines had a wide circulation throughout theMiddle Ages, but were enriched in the fifteenth century by therediscovery of theCorpus Hermeticum. TheCorpus wasa collection of heterogeneous texts, dealing both with practical magicand the mystical teachings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, anEgyptian sage who purportedly lived at the time of Moses and was firstin the lineage of a tradition of wisdom (the so-calledpriscatheologia). The alleged antiquity of theCorpusrepresented the strongest evidence of its authority and reliability,and thinkers like Marsilio Ficino in hisDe vita, and thenCornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) in hisDe occultaphilosophia, proposed doctrines based on it. Their readers wereencouraged to carve talismans and images, and surround themselves withprecise colors or herbs connected to planetary influences in order toexploit the conjunction of the whole, a living being of which man isboth part and lord. Magical treatises included recipes and empiricaldescriptions, and in hisDe augmentis Scientiarum evenFrancis Bacon described magic as an operative knowledge of hiddenforms and the harmony of things, which displays the wonderful works ofnature. The connection betweenmicro andmacrocosmusalso underlay medical practice—as in the case of Ficino himselfand later Paracelsus—and disciplines like physiognomy, which wasconsidered part of the Aristotelian natural encyclopedia. DellaPorta’sDe physiognomia humana (1586), which was mainlya collection of past authorities that included ethical problems andwas accompanied by illustrations, became the standard text on thetopic until Lavater. There were also expressly hermetic approaches tothe subject, including the one by Robert Fludd (1574–1637).

4.4 Natural Philosophy and Religion

Many of the doctrines of natural philosophy contrasted with theteachings of religion, and there were a number of possible solutionsto this problem. Some authors appealed to the radical differencebetween the realms of faith and philosophy, relying on the Averroistic(even if not formulated by Averroes himself) doctrine of the“double truth”. This was the case, for example, of PietroPomponazzi. Yet other authors, such as Bessarion or Simone Porzio, whocame from very different backgrounds, rejected any confusion betweenphilosophy and faith at the latter’s expense (even thoughBessarion, like Ficino, argued for a greater compatibility betweenPlatonism and Christianity). There were also others, like the JesuitPedro da Fonseca (1528–1599), who considered Plato’snatural philosophy too dangerously similar to Christianity andtherefore preferred the Aristotelian paradigm. On the other hand, somethinkers tried instead to genuinely reconcile philosophy and faith,particularly during the periods of doctrinal conflict and religiouswarfare that followed the Reformation. This was particularly true inProtestant countries, where even at the end of the sixteenth centurythe problem of the double truth was a matter of intense debate.Reformed scholars displayed a clear bias against Aristotle, thephilosopher who they held responsible for sustaining the scholasticedifice of Catholic theology, and in Wittenberg they even mounted ashort-lived attempt to replace him with Pliny: but the disorderedapproach of theNatural History made it unsuitable forsuperseding the Aristotelian encyclopedia for teaching. PhilippMelanchthon (1497–1560) reconciled the distinction betweenreligion and science of nature by arguing that nature was creation ofGod and everything in it had to be seen as the work of providence.Some philosophers, such as John Amos Comenius (1592–1670),supported the alliance between natural science and religion by arguingfor a philosophy based on the biblical teachings, even though thisposition was often intended to combat the excess of naturalphilosophers rather than to offer an alternative system. However, bothin Protestant and Catholic contexts, scientists like Rheticus(1514–1574) and Galileo denied that the Bible had any scientificvalue (yet, refusingtout court the divine role in theexplanation of Biblical events such as the Genesis flood, in favor aof a fully natural account, as Camilla Erculiani suggested in 1584,was likely to cause the intervention of the Roman Inquisition).Scholars like John Case (d. 1600), who considered Aristotelianismcompatible with Christian dogmas such as creation and divineprovidence, were particularly fond of searching for ways to syncretizetheology with natural philosophy. Attempts to reconcile thePhilosopher with the Christian religion, even at the cost of relyingon forced or fanciful readings, were still being made in theseventeenth century. Descartes will solve the interferences betweennatural science and religion by limiting the former to theinvestigation of finite objects, the only ones accessible to humanbeings. Yet, by posing limits to human knowledge, he also rejected ananthropocentric view of the creation.

Nor were these problems confined to Christian learned contexts: theywere the subject of a number of similar reflections within the Jewishtradition as well. Jewish thinkers often considered natural science amere system of hypotheses, which was capable of grasping only thesuperficial appearance of things, and was subordinate to the absolutetruth offered by the Torah. This position was defended by authors suchas Judah Loew ben Bezalel (also known as Maharal, 1520–1609),who posited a radical distinction between the natural world and theteachings of Torah, as well as Azariah Figo (1579–1547). Inparticular, Loew claimed that while it was possible to illuminate andexplain the natural order of the physical world, this was not true ofthe relationship between God and the creation. This attitude wasprobably in part due to Jews’ sense of exclusion andmarginalization from the institutions where natural philosophy wastaught and practiced (an important exception to this rule was Italy,where personalities like Elijah del Medigo (circa 1458–1493)took advantage of the separation between science and theology in theuniversities). Nonetheless, all of these Jewish authors—both theItalian “free-thinkers” and those who defended thesuperiority of the Torah—still relied on Aristotle as the mainauthority for natural philosophy, and there were multiple attempts byphilosophers like Ioseph ben Shem Tov (circa 1400–circa 1480)and Abraham Farissol (1451–circa 1525) to integrate theStagirite within the Hebraic philosophical tradition. A minority ofJewish authors, including Moses Isserles (1520–1572), considerednatural philosophy a useful tool for demonstrating the glory of God.

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