Paracelsus's Theory of Embodiment

Paracelsus's Theory of Embodiment PDF Author: Amy Eisen Cislo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317313801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Paracelsus has been called the father of modern chemistry and is legendary for his treatment of syphilis. This work argues that Paracelsus developed an understanding of the body as composed of two distinct sexes, revolutionizing early modern conceptions of the female body as an inversion of or flawed approximation of the male body.

Paracelsus's Theory of Embodiment

Paracelsus's Theory of Embodiment PDF Author: Amy Eisen Cislo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317313801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Paracelsus has been called the father of modern chemistry and is legendary for his treatment of syphilis. This work argues that Paracelsus developed an understanding of the body as composed of two distinct sexes, revolutionizing early modern conceptions of the female body as an inversion of or flawed approximation of the male body.

An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge

An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge PDF Author: Georgiana D. Hedesan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317182146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
History of science credits the Flemish physician, alchemist and philosopher Jan Baptist Van Helmont (1579-1644) for his contributions to the development of chemistry and medicine. Yet, as this book makes clear, focussing on Van Helmont's impact on modern science does not do justice to the complexity of his thought or to his influence on successive generations of intellectuals like Robert Boyle or Gottfried Leibniz. Revealing Van Helmont as an original thinker who sought to produce a post-Scholastic synthesis of religion and natural philosophy, Georgiana Hedesan reconstructs his ambitious quest for universal knowledge as it emerges from the text of the Ortus medicinae (1648). Published after Van Helmont's death by his son, the work can best be understood as a compilation of finished and unfinished treatises, the historical product of a life unsettled by religious persecution and personal misfortune. The present book provides a coherent account of Van Helmont's philosophy by analysing its main tenets. Divided into two parts, the study opens with a background to Van Helmont's concept of an alchemical Christian philosophy, demonstrating that his outlook was deeply grounded in the tradition of medical alchemy as reformed by Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493-1541). It then reconstitutes Van Helmont's biography, while giving a historical dimension to his intellectual output. The second part reconstructs Van Helmont's Christian philosophy, investigating his views on God, nature and man, as well as his applied philosophy. Hedesan also provides an account of the development of Van Helmont's thought throughout his life. The conclusion sums up Van Helmont's intellectual achievement and highlights avenues of future research.

Prospero's America

Prospero's America PDF Author: Walter W. Woodward
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807895938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
In Prospero’s America, Walter W. Woodward examines the transfer of alchemical culture to America by John Winthrop, Jr., one of English colonization’s early giants. Winthrop participated in a pan-European network of natural philosophers who believed alchemy could improve the human condition and hasten Christ’s Second Coming. Woodward demonstrates the influence of Winthrop and his philosophy on New England’s cultural formation: its settlement, economy, religious toleration, Indian relations, medical practice, witchcraft prosecution, and imperial diplomacy. Prospero’s America reconceptualizes the significance of early modern science in shaping New England hand in hand with Puritanism and politics.

Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History

Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History PDF Author: Iris Idelson-Shein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350052159
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This is the first study of monstrosity in Jewish history from the Middle Ages to modernity. Drawing on Jewish history, literary studies, folklore, art history and the history of science, it examines both the historical depiction of Jews as monsters and the creative use of monstrous beings in Jewish culture. Jews have occupied a liminal position within European society and culture, being deeply immersed yet outsiders to it. For this reason, they were perceived in terms of otherness and were often represented as monstrous beings. However, at the same time, European Jews invoked, with tantalizing ubiquity, images of magical, terrifying and hybrid beings in their texts, art and folktales. These images were used by Jewish authors and artists to push back against their own identification as monstrous or diabolical and to tackle concerns about religious persecution, assimilation and acculturation, gender and sexuality, science and technology and the rise of antisemitism. Bringing together an impressive cast of contributors from around the world, this fascinating volume is an invaluable resource for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in Jewish studies, as well as the history of monsters.

Spiritual Alchemy

Spiritual Alchemy PDF Author: Mike A. Zuber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190073063
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Most professional historians see the relationship between pre-modern and modern alchemy as one of discontinuity and contrast. Mike A. Zuber challenges this dominant understanding and explores aspects of alchemy that have been neglected by recent work in the history of science. The predominant focus on the scientific aspect of alchemy, such as laboratory experiment, practical techniques, and material ingredients, argues Zuber, marginalizes the things that render alchemy so fascinating: its rich and vivid imagery, reliance on the medium of manuscript, and complicated relationship with religion. Spiritual Alchemy traces the early-modern antecedents of modern alchemy through generations of followers of Jacob Boehme, the cobbler and theosopher of Görlitz. As Boehme's disciples down the generations -- including the Silesian nobleman Abraham von Franckenberg and the London-based German immigrant Dionysius Andreas Freher, among others -- studied his writings, they drew on his spiritual alchemy, adapted it, and communicated it to their contemporaries. Spiritual alchemy combines traditional elements of alchemical literature with Christian mysticism. Defying the boundaries between science and religion, this combination was transmitted from Görlitz ultimately to England. In 1850, it inspired a young woman, later known as Mary Anne Atwood, to write her Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, usually seen as the first modern interpretation of alchemy. Drawing extensively on manuscript or otherwise obscure sources, Zuber documents continuity between pre-modern and modern forms of alchemy while exploring this hybrid phenomenon.

Robert Burton and the Transformative Powers of Melancholy

Robert Burton and the Transformative Powers of Melancholy PDF Author: Stephanie Shirilan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317062256
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Few English books are as widely known, underread, and underappreciated as Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. Stephanie Shirilan laments that modern scholars often treat the Anatomy as an unmediated repository of early modern views on melancholy, overlooking the fact that Burton is writing a cento - an ancient form of satire that quotes and misquotes authoritative texts in often subversive ways - and that his express intent in so doing is to offer his readers literary therapy for melancholy. This book explores the ways in which the Anatomy dispenses both direct physic and more systemic medicine by encouraging readers to think of melancholy as a privileged mental and spiritual acuity that requires cultivation and management rather than cure. Refuting the prevailing historiography of anxious early modern embodiment that cites Burton as a key witness, Shirilan submits that the Anatomy rejects contemporary Neostoic and Puritan approaches to melancholy. She reads Burton’s erraticism, opacity, and theatricality as modes of resistance against demands for constancy, transparency, and plainness in the popular literature of spiritual and moral hygiene of his day. She shows how Burton draws on rhetorical, theological, and philosophical traditions that privilege the transformative powers of the imagination in order to celebrate melancholic impressionability for its capacity to inspire and engender empathy, charity, and faith.

Bridging Traditions

Bridging Traditions PDF Author: Karen Hunger Parshall
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271091258
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Bridging Traditions explores the connections between apparently different zones of comprehension and experience—magic and experiment, alchemy and mechanics, practical mathematics and geometrical mysticism, things earthy and heavenly, and especially science and medicine—by focusing on points of intersection among alchemy, chemistry, and Paracelsian medical philosophy. In exploring the varieties of natural knowledge in the early modern era, the authors pay tribute to the work of Allen Debus, whose own endeavors cleared the way for scholars to examine subjects that were once snubbed as suitable only to the refuse heap of the history of science.

Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy

Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy PDF Author: Peter Distelzweig
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 940177353X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This volume presents an innovative look at early modern medicine and natural philosophy as historically interrelated developments. The individual chapters chart this interrelation in a variety of contexts, from the Humanists who drew on Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle to answer philosophical and medical questions, to medical debates on the limits and power of mechanism, and on to eighteenth-century controversies over medical materialism and 'atheism.' The work presented here broadens our understanding of both philosophy and medicine in this period by illustrating the ways these disciplines were in deep theoretical and methodological dialogue and by demonstrating the importance of this dialogue for understanding their history. Taken together, these papers argue that to overlook the medical context of natural philosophy and the philosophical context of medicine is to overlook fundamentally important aspects of these intellectual endeavors.

White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance

White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance PDF Author: Paola Zambelli
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004160981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The ideas of philosophers (Ficino, Pico, Della Porta, Bruno) on magic interfered with popular alternative and witchcraft rites. This book focuses on "wandering scholastics" (Trithemius, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Bruno) and will be a stimulating read for all those interested in Renaissance mentality.

Shakespeare, Alchemy and the Creative Imagination

Shakespeare, Alchemy and the Creative Imagination PDF Author: Margaret Healy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107004047
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Healy demonstrates how Renaissance alchemy shaped Shakespeare's bawdy but spiritual sonnets, transforming our understanding of Shakespeare's art and beliefs.