Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy: Renaissance Debates on Matter, Life and the Soul

Inspired by the ideas found in the newly recovered ancient sources, Renaissance humanists questioned the traditional teachings of universities. Humanistically trained physicians, called medical humanists, were particularly active in the field of natural philosophy, where alternative approaches were launched and tested. Their intellectual outcome contributed to the reorientation of philosophy toward natural questions, which were to become crucial in the seventeenth century. This volume explores six medical humanists of diverse geographical and confessional origins (Leoniceno, Fernel, Schegk, Gemma, Liceti and Sennert) and their debates on matter, life and the soul. The study of these debates sheds new light on the contributions of humanist culture to the evolution of early modern natural philosophy.

Hiro Hirai, Ph.D. (1999) in history of science, University of Lille 3, is a Marie Curie Fellow at Radboud University Nijmegen. He has published widely in early modern natural philosophy, medicine and chemistry, including Le concept de semence dans les théories de la matière à la Renaissance (2005). He is Vice Editor of Early Science and Medicine.