Philosophy of the Renaissance

Natural Philosophy of the Renaissance

A typical representative of Renaissance natural philosophy was the Swiss-born Paracelsus (1493-1541), whose true name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. A scholar and sorcerer, a physician and “miracle worker,” he became one of the prototypes of the legendary Doctor Faust, who made a pact with the devil in pursuit of knowledge. Paracelsus regarded medicine as an all-encompassing science, deriving its sources and foundation from theology and philosophy, astrology and alchemy. The processes occurring within the human body are reduced to the chemical transformations of the same elements that compose other bodies. There are three alchemical principles—mercury, salt, and sulfur. Mercury corresponds to spirit, salt to body, and sulfur to soul. Paracelsus explained all bodily properties through varying proportions of these principles: an excess of sulfur induces fever, while too much salt leads to dropsy. Thus, medicine is the foremost science because it attends to the well-being of humanity, and humanity itself is the center of the universe and the ultimate goal of creation, reflecting the macrocosm as a microcosm.

In the latter half of the 16th century, more or less comprehensive systems of natural philosophy emerged in Italy, which incorporated fewer elements of antiquity. The first notable figure here is Gerolamo Cardano (1500-1576), renowned for constructing the eponymous “cardan shaft” and devising a method for solving cubic equations. He sought to explain nature based on two principles: matter as a passive entity and the omnipresent world soul as the principle of life and activity. Matter consists of three elements: earth, water, and air. The soul manifests as light and heat. Attraction and repulsion (love and hate in humans) serve as the primary causes of universal movement.

Cardano exemplifies the Renaissance individual, embodying contradictory traits that elevate the self alongside those that reveal its baseness. He possessed a detailed lexicon expressing a rich palette of human qualities, demonstrating how these traits were present in his character. In his work On My Life, Cardano describes himself thus: “I possess a naturally philosophical and capable mind suited for the sciences. I am witty, refined, respectable, merry, pious, loyal, a friend of wisdom, thoughtful, enterprising, curious, obliging, competitive, inventive, self-taught, prone to wonder, cunning, fierce, a knower of the mysteries of science, sober, industrious, carefree, talkative, disdainful of religions, vengeful, envious, melancholic, treacherous, deceitful, a sorcerer, a magician, unfortunate, one who does not love his own, inclined to solitude, odious, severe, a prophet, jealous, a jester, a slanderer, pliable, changeable; these are the contradictions in my character and behavior.”

Bernardino Telesio (1508-1588) was the founder of a natural philosophy society, which later transformed into an academy, sparking the development of empirical studies of nature. Telesio believed that nature should be studied without venturing beyond its confines. Although God created the world and established its laws, the act of creation bears no relation to it; nature must be studied as a fact in itself, independent of God, and the sole source of knowledge is experience. The “magnitude” of the world and the mass of material substance remain unchanged under any circumstances. Telesio rejected the atomists’ doctrine of absolute void. In his view, matter is passive and serves as the battleground for two active principles—heat and cold. From matter and these two active forces, all of nature is constructed.

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was an Italian philosopher and poet, condemned by the ecclesiastical inquisition for heresy and burned alive in Rome. He was greatly impressed by Copernicus's work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (1543). Bruno perceived the task of philosophy as understanding nature in its unity. Truth is singular, and its comprehension is the domain of science, not religion. However, he did not entirely reject religion; rather, he leaned towards pantheism: “Nature is nothing other than God in things” (Natura est Deus in rebus). Bruno distinguished between nature as the original, omnipresent substance (natura naturans) and the empirical world as the created nature (natura naturata). He presented original nature as a dual substance: one spiritual and the other corporeal, though ultimately both converge to a single root. Movement is explained by an active world soul, which permeates all nature, rendering everything in the world ensouled. The prerequisite for knowledge is doubt. The stages of understanding are sensation, reason, intellect, and spirit (animus). In the spirit, truth exists in its own living form.