Early Science and Medicine最新文献

In the academic year 1599–1600, Daniel Sennert offered a course on natural philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. When it was finished, he bundled the set of 26 disputations that accompanied the course into a separate publication and entitled it Epitome naturalis scientiæ. Although he was professor of medicine from 1602 onwards, he continued to work on natural philosophy and published three further versions of his Epitome, now in the form of a textbook. This article offers a comparative analysis of all four versions, dated 1599/1600, 1618, 1624, and 1632/33 respectively. It documents that Sennert insisted on the importance of providing students with a coherent body of doctrine, which he felt had to be Aristotelian, but at the same time introduced new empirical material into his textbooks. While these additions worked well in the case of his natural historical inserts, they were problematic in the case of his turn to an atomistic theory of matter, and they involved a full contradiction in the case of cosmology. Sennert’s case illustrates a key problem for university pedagogues in the pre-Cartesian part of the seventeenth century – namely, that of maintaining a coherent curriculum in the face of mounting counterevidence against the traditional framework.

This article discusses a consistency problem arising from the combination of three claims that Sennert makes in both his early and his late writings: The first refers to his belief in the reality of metals changing into metals of a different species; the second to his belief that substantial forms individuate metals and determine their species membership; and the third to his belief that substantial forms have come into being with creation and perpetuate their species by means of multiplying themselves. Metallic transmutation seems to imply a commitment to species change whereas the multiplication of substantial forms implies a commitment to species constancy. I will argue that the use of vegetal analogies in Sennert’s early writings could give a clue as to how this apparent inconsistency could be resolved. In particular, Sennert’s comments on Jacob Schegk’s account of the generation of plant-based medicaments are meant to illuminate the analogy that Sennert draws between the generation of plant-based medicaments and the structure of metallic mixtures. Sennert’s account of form-bearing, metal-generating spirits that can be constituents of mixtures such as mineral waters offers theoretical resources to reconcile species constancy with species change.

Daniel Sennert’s views on the metallic transmutation promised by alchemy developed over time, shifting from the skeptical position of his earliest writings to a confirmed belief that he acquired by the 1610s. Despite a shrinking pool of empirical support after the publication of his De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu in 1619, the mature Sennert never abandoned his belief in the chrysopoeia or metallic metamorphosis of the alchemists. The present paper explores the reasons for Sennert’s stubborn refusal to reject transmutation even as his developing atomism tacitly rendered it ever less necessary as a tool for explaining material change. The paper also examines Robert Boyle’s critique of Sennert’s atomism as providing an inadequate and perhaps unworkable explanation of chrysopoeia.

This article explores how scurvy, a disease resulting from vitamin C deficiency, was understood and treated in the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. It focuses on Daniel Sennert’s work on scurvy of 1624 and 1631, which significantly influenced medical education and practice. By examining Sennert’s work and subsequent dissertations supervised by scholars like Werner Rolfinck, the study highlights the role of academic disputations in disseminating medical knowledge. The article reveals that scurvy affected not only seafarers but also impoverished Europeans around the Baltic, integrating traditional cures with emerging scientific theories, thus forming a comprehensive network of medical communication.

The guiding idea behind the Sennert Collaborators database is the recognition that university dissertations of the early modern period were not merely academic exercises but critical artifacts in the creation and dissemination of knowledge. This digital project focuses on the extensive collaborative networks surrounding Daniel Sennert, a pioneering professor of medicine at the University of Wittenberg in the seventeenth century. By cataloging the dissertations he supervised and by mapping the connections between the people and places involved, the database sheds new light on how ideas circulated, evolved, and took root in the intellectual and practical domains of early modern Europe.

This paper asks the question whether any peculiar features of Protestant, specifically, Calvinist metaphysical theories of the individuation of bodies could explain the preponderance of Calvinists among early-seventeenth century atomists. By examining the arguments on individuation of the highly influential late-sixteenth century Catholic philosophers, Zabarella and Suarez, I show that Zabarella’s approach to individuation crossed over to the early Lutheran Aristotelian metaphysician, Cornelis Martini, whereas Suarez’s approach was favored by Scheibler – one of the next generation of Scholastic Lutheran philosophers –, and by his equally influential Calvinist contemporary, Burgersdijk. Though the lack of confessional divides indicates that there is no direct link between Calvinist theories of individuation and atomism, I show that Protestant appropriations of Suarez’s account opened up a metaphysically safe space for non-hylomorphic views of bodies.

This essay aims to address little-known aspects of the confessionalization of natural philosophy in sixteenth-century Italy, with a focus on controversies surrounding the age and nature of the Earth. Sources suggest that – rather than causing a process – reactions to the Protestant Reformation accelerated and shaped developments already underway at the beginning of the sixteenth century when critics of Aristotelian eternalism began to call for a science of nature more in line with Christian beliefs. While a Christianized history of the Earth emerged as an explicit program in late-sixteenth century Italy, I would argue that Counter-Reformation cultural policies favored, but did not enforce, the confessionalization of the field and that largely secular approaches remained vital, legitimate, and influential.

Did allegorical interpretations of animals disappear from Protestant natural histories due to what has been described as the literalist mentality of the Reformers? This paper uses histories of animals by (or deriving from) the Zurich-based naturalist Conrad Gessner to argue for two claims: First, that not every instance of the disappearance of allegorical meanings can be explained through the emphasis on literal meanings in Reformed hermeneutics; this is so because moral and mystical interpretations of the wild animals of the Book of Job can be found in the commentary by Gessner’s teacher, Conrad Pellikan. Secondly, this paper argues that moral interpretations of ants persist in Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum, a work based on Gessner’s unpublished notes. Such interpretations are compatible with Pellikan’s moral and mystical interpretations of the ants of the Solomonic Proverbs. What does disappear are the eschatological interpretations of ants found in Catholic natural histories such as those of Ulisse Aldrovandi. I conjecture that the repudiation of the notion of personal merit in Reformed theology could explain this divergence.

The prolific English divine Samuel Parker (1640–1688) is best known for his works on theology and politics and for his blistering attacks on non-conformity, but was also an early member of the Royal Society who wrote extensively on natural philosophy and theology. My aim in this paper is to highlight a unifying element in this diverse corpus. First, I show how Parker promoted the epistemology and experimental methods of the nascent Royal Society in several early works, where he adopted a weak dispositional nativism rooted in an Epicurean theory of knowledge and mind not unlike the theory advanced by Gassendi. Secondly, I show how, in later polemics against non-conformism and puritanism, Parker repurposed this weak dispositional nativism for his theological and political polemics.

Once he has established the separation of the two substances, Descartes seems to be no longer interested in the location of spiritual substances, unless he has to localize the human mind in the pineal gland or discuss the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is only in his correspondence with Henry More that he is forced to address this problem, in a debate that links the question of the infinity of the universe and the omnipresence of God. Even if they received little attention in Descartes’s published output, however, both questions became the central theme of the Dutch controversies over Cartesian philosophy: this was one of the issues, in fact, over which the followers of Voetius and Cocceius were opposed. This intra-confessional controversy is underpinned not only by a different evaluation of Cartesian philosophy and the relationship between philosophy and theology, but also by the need to refute Socinian theses about the presence of God in the world. Our case study can also help to show how the appropriation and transformation of a philosophy can be extremely creative when taking place in a cultural context other than the original environment.