The Renaissance witnessed an upsurge in explanations of natural events in terms of invisibly small particles – atoms, corpuscles, minima, monads and particles. The reasons for this development are as varied as are the entities that were proposed. This volume covers the period from the earliest commentaries on Lucretius’ De rerum natura to the sources of Newton’s alchemical texts.

Contributors examine key developments in Renaissance physiology, meteorology, metaphysics, theology, chymistry and historiography, all of which came to assign a greater explanatory weight to minute entities. These contributions show that there was no simple “revival of atomism”, but that the Renaissance confronts us with a diverse and conceptually messy process.

Contents

Front Matter

Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Atoms, Corpuscles, and Minima in the Renaissance: An Overview – Christoph Lüthy & Elena Nicoli

Atomism in Sixteenth-Century Italian Commentaries on Lucretius – Elena Nicoli

Galenic Medicine and the Atomist Revival: Elements, Particles, and Minima in Late Renaissance Physiology – Elisabeth Moreau

Pores, Parts, and Powers in Sixteenth-Century Commentaries on Meteorologica IV – Craig Martin

Atoms, Corpuscles, and Minima in the Renaissance: The Case of Nicolaus Biesius (1516–1573) – Christoph Lüthy

Mechanical Arts and Biological Development on the Sixteenth-Century World Stage: The Paracelsian Mechanical Philosophy of Petrus Severinus – Jole Shackelford

Democritus in Francesco Patrizi and Giordano Bruno – Leen Spruit

Nicholas Hill, an English Atomist – Sandra Plastina

Finite God and Infinite Space: Conrad Vorstius and David Gorlaeus – Kuni Sakamoto

Atomism, Mechanism, and Chymistry in the Natural Philosophy of Walter Warner – Stephen Clucas

Isaac Newton’s Atomist Sources: The Case of Bernhard Varenius – William R. Newman

Bibliography

Index of Names

Source: https://brill.com/display/title/63650