Article ID: CBB084262116

Heavenly Animation as the Foundation for Fracastoro’s Homocentrism: Aristotelian-Platonic Eclecticism beyond the School of Padua (2021)

unapi

This essay deals with Girolamo Fracastoro’s ensouled cosmology. His Homocentrica sive de stellis (1538), an astronomy of concentric spheres, was discussed by the Padua School of Aristotelians. Since the polemics over the immortality of the human soul, which had famously opposed Pomponazzi to Nifo, psychological discussions—including those about heavenly spheres’ souls—raised heated controversies. Fracastoro discussed the foundations of his homocentric planetary theory in a dialogue titled Fracastorius, sive de anima (1555). In a 1531 exchange with Gasparo Contarini, Fracastoro discussed celestial physics, including problems linked to mathematical analysis of physical causation. Contarini expressed his doubts over Fracastoro’s lack of consideration of Aristotelian viewpoints on heavenly souls and intelligences. Fracastoro offered an account of cosmic animation in his later dialogue “On the Soul,” taking a different path than his Paduan teachers. He picked up the Platonic idea of the “world soul,” freely connecting it with Aristotelian views about the ensouled cosmos of concentric spheres, resulting in an eclectic composition of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Averroistic elements. Fracastoro grounded his renewed mathematical astronomy on an understanding of the cosmos as a living whole. His animated homocentric cosmos represented a development of Aristotelian premises and a step beyond this legacy.

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Authors & Contributors
Blank, Andreas
Akopyan, Ovanes
Garau, Rodolfo
Demarest, Boris
Wright, Aaron Sidney
Tybjerg, Karin
Concepts
Physics
Cosmology
Causality
Soul (philosophy)
Mathematics
Astronomy
Time Periods
16th century
17th century
Renaissance
Early modern
21st century
20th century, late
Places
Italy
Europe
Padua (Italy)
Institutions
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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