Treccani History of Science
Science in the Renaissance
E1 – Cultural and institutional context
Edited by Cesare Vasoli
Cultural and institutional context
• 1. The European political and religious crisis between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
• 2. The Italian regional states and their conflicts
• 3. The rise and diffusion of Italian humanistic culture
• 4. The ‘discovery’ of America and the transformations of European economic and social life
• 5. The Reformation and its diffusion in Europe
• 6. The European wars of religion
• 7. The ‘Horrende wars’
• 8. The last phase of the wars and the economic and intellectual affirmation of Elizabethan England
• 9. Science in the Age of the Renaissance
The revival of ancient science
• 1. Petrarch and the return of the ‘Skeptical Cicero’
• 2. Coluccio Salutati and the ‘grammar’
• 3. ‘Geographical philology’
• 4. Manuel Crisolora and the diffusion of Ptolemy geographer
• 5. Crisolora and the text of Ptolemy
• 6. Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli and the correction of Ptolemy
• 7. From Celsus to Archimedes: in search of scientific texts
• 8. Cardinal Bessarione and Giorgio Gemisto Pletone
• 9. The translations in Rome of Nicholas V
• 10. John Regiomontanus
• 11. The Rome of Sixtus IV and the Venetian humanists
• 12. Angelo Poliziano and the discoveries of Giano Lascaris
• 13. Giorgio Valla and the new encyclopaedia of knowledge
• 14. Conclusions
The peripatetic sciences: continuity, development and crisis
• 1. The system of Aristotelian sciences between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
• 2. University Aristotelianism and the Humanism
The revival of Platonism
• 1. Marsilio Ficino
• 2. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
• 3. Cosmology
• 4. The man-microcosm
Science, magic and astrology
• 1. Magical and astrological knowledge
• 2. Marsilio Ficino
• 3. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
• 4. Pietro Pomponazzi
• 5. Agrippa of Nettesheim
• 6. Gerolamo Cardano
• 7. Giambattista Della Porta
Science and religion
• 1. The uneasy peace with Aristotelianism
• 2. The Copernican crisis: Protestants
• 3. The Copernican crisis: Catholics
• 4. The Galileo crisis
The impact of geographical discoveries
• 1. The philosophy of discoveries
• 2. The natural sciences
• 3. Anthropological aspects
• 4. The anthropology of the ‘Good Savage’
Printing and its effects on the transformation and spread of scientific knowledge
• 1. From the manuscript to the printed scientific book
• 2. Technical procedures and conceptual paradigms in typographic printing
• 3. The technological model of the printed book and the prodromes of scientific knowledge
• 4. The place of scientific books in book production between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
• 5. The editions of the classics and the printing of contemporary authors
• 6. The illustrations of scientific books from Roberto Valturio to Andrea Vesalio
Method and order of knowledge
• 1. Prodromes of a debate
• 2. The De inventione dialectica of Agricola
• 3. The method and dialectic in Melanchthon
• 4. The contribution of Sturm
• 5. Pietro Ramo: the elaboration and development of his method
• 6. The spread of Ramism and anti-Masonic polemics
• 7. La Quaestio certitudinis mathematicarum
• 8. Logic in the Paduan School: the work of Zabarella
Images and theories of the world
• 1. Cosmologies
• 2. Natural philosophy