Abstract This paper examines the early modern Spanish term “ alçar figuras ” (to “draw figures”) as a critical expression of astrological practice within Spain’s overseas territories. It aims to contribute to the decolonisation of the study of astrological science in the Spanish colonial dominions by analysing how new geographical realities shaped the relationship between practice and the conceptual frameworks employed by practitioners. In so doing, it explores how astrologers both maintained elements of tradition and sought to protect their work from the structural power of inquisitorial scrutiny, through the development of specific astrological conceptual categories. By combining lexical, epistemological, and visual analysis of Iberian astronomical traditions with archival research from inquisitorial proceedings in New Spain, Guatemala, and the Philippines, this research conceptualises the manipulation and drawing of celestial diagrams as a deployment of ‘epistemic tools’. It argues that the lack of clear boundaries between prohibited and authorized astrology in popular and erudite circles led to the widespread use of a term that prioritised methodology – the physical act of ‘drawing’ – as the defining feature of astrological practice.
This paper examines the development of Leibniz's conception of elasticity in the framework of his theory of force and its connection with the individuality of bodies. The main aim of the paper is to show how elasticity, according to Leibniz, constitutes the main conceptual device that allows one to conceive bodies as structures and also a necessary (albeit not sufficient) feature of what he considers to be real bodies. To do so, I firstly discuss Leibniz's subdivision of forces into "dead", "living", "respective", and "directive", and their "economy" within bodies. Secondly, I address the problem of the conversion of living force into dead force and vice versa and show how the "economy of forces" is grounded in Leibniz's conception of elasticity as a structural property of matter. I conclude by examining how the function of elasticity leads to a structural conception of bodies and by evaluating its metaphysical consequences.
The present study describes an early physiological experiment conducted by Leonardo da Vinci on a frog, which led to numerous anatomical and philosophical interpretations, often incorrect. It examines the history of the experiment and its significance, and seek to correct its erroneous interpretations, while also discussing Leonardo's role in Renaissance anatomy, the problems of vivisection and spinal cord experiments, and the question of the soul and its seat. Based on comparative anatomy, the Aristotelian definition of life, and Leonardo's idea of the seat of the soul, it proposes a modern interpretation of his conclusion that the basis of movement and life is found in the upper spinal cord.
This article examines the intellectual legacy of Daniel Sennert (1572–1637) in Swedish academic disputations from 1600 to 1651. It analyzes how his ideas, particularly on medicine and natural philosophy, influenced the intellectual milieu of the universities of Uppsala, Tartu, and Turku. Through the lens of disputations, a key academic genre of early modern Europe, the study highlights Sennert’s prominence as a cited authority. Despite limited medical activity in Swedish universities during this period, Sennert’s works were widely utilized as textbooks, especially in philosophy and physics, reflecting his significant role in disseminating scientific knowledge. The findings reveal that Sennert’s ideas reached Swedish academia primarily through alumni of Wittenberg University, where he taught. The study underscores the textual transmission of knowledge and the role of institutional libraries in amplifying Sennert’s influence within early modern Sweden’s unique and uniform academic framework.
This paper examines the themes of secrecy, deception, and openness in early modern chymistry and medicine, focusing on episodes from the correspondence of the prominent German physician and natural philosopher Daniel Sennert. It highlights how Sennert and his brother-in-law, the Breslau municipal physician Michael Doring, confronted a culture rife with fraudulent claims and secretive practices that were especially prevalent amid the economic and political instability that prevailed during the Thirty Years' War. The paper reveals their struggles against the charlatanism of those who sought to exploit the chaotic medical marketplace of the time, and the analysis extends to the broader implications of their advocacy for transparency that drew upon humanist literature and Christian religious ideals. This work positions Sennert as an archetypical figure in the transition towards skepticism and openness in science, highlighting the significant role of German chymical physicians in shaping early modern scientific discourse.
This essay explores the ties between Daniel Sennert and the University of Padua. It first reconstructs personal ties due to the circulation of students, books and ideas between Wittenberg and Padua as mediated by the German Nation of Artists in Padua. Secondly, it examines debates in Padua on the origins of life, that Sennert followed and to which he reacted. As this essay shows, authors such as Fortunio Liceti were important references for Sennert. But he also adopted from radical Paduan thinkers such as Pietro Pomponazzi and Cesare Cremonini a rational attitude to questions of natural philosophy that informed his own approach to theologically controversial problems. Believing that there were different approaches to the truth, Sennert viewed rational inquiry and revelation as complementary, while embracing a naturalistic approach to questions of the origins of life and the operations of the soul, including the rational faculty. He excluded the separability of soul and body in the domain of natural philosophy, while not excluding this very possibility for God, who operates beyond the limits of physics. His naturalistic position alarmed the Inquisition, much to the displeasure of Italian authors who praised Sennert.
This paper examines the theory of impetus formulated by the Spanish philosopher Luis Coronel (ca. 1475–1531) and assesses its implications concerning the explanation of the acceleration of objects in free fall motion, arguing that Coronel provided what can be viewed as a modern explanation for this phenomenon. The paper begins by outlining the distinctive characteristics of medieval impetus theories preceding that of Coronel, and continues with a demonstration of how Coronel deviates from these earlier accounts due to a novel perspective on impetus, wherein impetus is equated with motion itself, and is no longer conceived as a cause of motion. Next, the various ramifications of this fresh outlook are considered, with particular emphasis on the case of free fall motion. The final section explores the influence of Coronel’s theory, drawing comparisons between his ideas and modern views on impetus and inertia.
Thanks to the work of several generations of scholars, there has never been a greater interest in early medieval medicine. Yet the field, which continues to be largely manuscript-based given the sheer number of unedited texts, remains tethered to two now-outdated manuscript catalogues that collectively record 225 Latin manuscripts containing medical writings produced before ca. 1100. The Corpus of Early Medieval Latin Medicine ( CEMLM ) has recently completed a handlist of early medieval manuscripts with medical texts that do not feature in the earlier catalogues, more than doubling the total number of witnesses up to the year 1000. These findings have far-reaching implications, and this article offers a series of case studies that illustrate how the handlist, in concert with a reassessment of definitions and categorizations in the field, is transforming our understanding of early medieval medicine.
In June 1681, an elephant who had been brought to Dublin as an exotic animal exhibit died in a fire, after which his remains were dissected by Irish surgeon and anatomist Allan Mullen. This paper examines the Dublin elephant’s life and death. By focusing on this elephant, this paper adds to our understanding of the ways in which interactions between people and other-than-human animals have shaped the past. The Dublin elephant serves as an example of the important roles that other-than-human animals played in the making of natural knowledge. People interacted with him in various settings – while he was on display, during his dissection, and in the form of objects. These interactions resulted in the development of accurate and inaccurate knowledge about elephants, with the elephant himself being a key participant in this process of knowledge-making.
This article examines the intellectual legacy of Daniel Sennert (1572-1637) in Swedish academic disputations from 1600 to 1651. It analyzes how his ideas, particularly on medicine and natural philosophy, influenced the intellectual milieu of the universities of Uppsala, Tartu, and Turku. Through the lens of disputations, a key academic genre of early modern Europe, the study highlights Sennert's prominence as a cited authority. Despite limited medical activity in Swedish universities during this period, Sennert's works were widely utilized as textbooks, especially in philosophy and physics, reflecting his significant role in disseminating scientific knowledge. The findings reveal that Sennert's ideas reached Swedish academia primarily through alumni of Wittenberg University, where he taught. The study underscores the textual transmission of knowledge and the role of institutional libraries in amplifying Sennert's influence within early modern Sweden's unique and uniform academic framework.
The Medicinae Alumni Vitebergenses project maintains a prosopographical database of standardized, machine-readable short biographies of all Wittenberg medical students between 1502 and 1648, along with their printed works. Selected works are indexed with keywords and summarized with the aim of visualizing Wittenberg's influence on the development and dissemination of a specifically Protestant medicine. The data-base does not view early modern physicians as isolated scholars, but rather attempts to trace possible social and intellectual influences. In this way, it can provide new impulses for research on Sennert in particular, since Sennert's relationship to his teachers has not been sufficiently researched. The database provides this information by automatically tracing teacher-student relationships, constructing networks, and creating comparable publication and teaching profiles. As this is an ongoing project, this article provides insights into ongoing research that will not be accessible before October 2025.
The diffusion of Paracelsian chymistry raised many debates in late-Renaissance medicine. One important innovation was the Paracelsian conception of therapy and pharmacy, which went against the tenets of the medical tradition. This led a series of German physicians to harmonize the Paracelsian system with Galenic medicine in order to introduce chymical remedies in their method of treatment. Among the actors of such chymical compromise, Daniel Sennert (1572-1637) emerged as a major figure of early modem medicine and natural philosophy. This article examines his stance on chymical therapy in De chymicorum liber (1619), where he surveyed some early digests of Paracelsian medicine by European adepts and detractors, including Severinus, Libavius, and Du Chesne, as well as lesser-known figures such as Francus, Scheunemann, and Dienheim, among others. In appraising their views, Sennert addressed important issues, such as the religious vocation of the Paracelsian adepts, the notion of "universal cure," the doctrine of "signatures," and the use of metallic ingredients for drug making. His resulting account of drugs and treatment sheds light on the diffusion of chymistry in seventeenth-century learned medicine.
Renaissance natural philosophers and physicians engaged in intense debates on occult qualities at the threshold of the Scientific Revolution. Daniel Sennert of Wittenberg played a significant role in these debates through his assiduous research. His efforts were crystallized in two works of his mature period: an inquiry into occult qualities as the second book of his Physical Memoirs (1636); and the massive volume On Occult Diseases (1635). Indeed, the Renaissance debates on occult qualities were closely related to those of occult diseases, as both issues were intertwined and fervently advanced by Jean Fernel of Paris. Sennert's lifelong quest for occult qualities and occult diseases was a critical response to Fernel's ideas.
Daniel Sennert's views on the metallic transmutation promised by alchemy developed over time, shifting from the skeptical position of his earliest writings to a confirmed belief that he acquired by the 1610s. Despite a shrinking pool of empirical support after the publication of his De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu in 1619, the mature Sennert never abandoned his belief in the chrysopoeia or metallic metamorphosis of the alchemists. The present paper explores the reasons for Sennert's stubborn refusal to reject transmutation even as his developing atomism tac-itly rendered it ever less necessary as a tool for explaining material change. The paper also examines Robert Boyle's critique of Sennert's atomism as providing an inadequate and perhaps unworkable explanation of chrysopoeia.
This article opts for a book-historical approach that has not to date attracted much of a following in studies on Daniel Sennert. It focuses on a selection of Italian, French, Dutch and English printed works published outside of Germany after 1630, and illustrates how Sennert's European fame began to rise from that time onwards. Likewise, it establishes that Latin editions remained common through most parts of Europe, with the exception of England and the Netherlands. Unlike the rest of Europe, the Dutch and English translations point to a growing interest among a non-Latinate reading public in the works of the Wittenberg professor. Whereas the scope of the Dutch translations is limited, a considerable number of Sennert's work appeared on the English book market of the second half of the seventeenth century.
This article explores how scurvy, a disease resulting from vitamin C deficiency, was understood and treated in the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. It focuses on Daniel Sennert's work on scurvy of 1624 and 1631, which significantly influenced medical education and practice. By examining Sennert's work and subsequent dissertations supervised by scholars like Werner Rolfinck, the study highlights the role of academic disputations in disseminating medical knowledge. The article reveals that scurvy affected not only seafarers but also impoverished Europeans around the Baltic, integrating traditional cures with emerging scientific theories, thus forming a comprehensive network of medical communication.
This article discusses a consistency problem arising from the combination of three claims that Sennert makes in both his early and his late writings: The first refers to his belief in the reality of metals changing into metals of a different species; the second to his belief that substantial forms individuate metals and determine their species membership; and the third to his belief that substantial forms have come into being with creation and perpetuate their species by means of multiplying themselves. Metallic transmutation seems to imply a commitment to species change whereas the multiplication of substantial forms implies a commitment to species constancy. I will argue that the use of vegetal analogies in Sennert's early writings could give a clue as to how this apparent inconsistency could be resolved. In particular, Sennert's comments on Jacob Schegk's account of the generation of plant-based medicaments are meant to illuminate the analogy that Sennert draws between the generation of plant-based medicaments and the structure of metallic mixtures. Sennert's account of form-bearing, metal-generating spirits that can be constituents of mixtures such as mineral waters offers theoretical resources to reconcile species constancy with species change.
In the academic year 1599-1600, Daniel Sennert offered a course on natural philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. When it was finished, he bundled the set of 26 disputations that accompanied the course into a separate publication and entitled it Epitome naturalis scientice. Although he was professor of medicine from 1602 onwards, he continued to work on natural philosophy and published three further versions of his Epitome, now in the form of a textbook. This article offers a comparative analysis of all four versions, dated 1599/1600, 1618, 1624, and 1632/33 respectively. It documents that Sennert insisted on the importance of providing students with a coherent body of doctrine, which he felt had to be Aristotelian, but at the same time introduced new empirical material into his textbooks. While these additions worked well in the case of his natural historical inserts, they were problematic in the case of his turn to an atomistic theory of matter, and they involved a full contradiction in the case of cosmology. Sennert's case illustrates a key problem for university pedagogues in the pre-Cartesian part of the seventeenth century-namely, that of maintaining a coherent curriculum in the face of mounting counterevidence against the traditional framework.
The guiding idea behind the Sennert Collaborators database is the recognition that university dissertations of the early modern period were not merely academic exercises but critical artifacts in the creation and dissemination of knowledge. This digital project focuses on the extensive collaborative networks surrounding Daniel Sennert, a pioneering professor of medicine at the University of Wittenberg in the seventeenth century. By cataloging the dissertations he supervised and by mapping the connections between the people and places involved, the database sheds new light on how ideas circulated, evolved, and took root in the intellectual and practical domains of early modern Europe.
