Abstract
In his pioneering article ‘The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua’, subsequently published in the book The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science, John Herman Randall suggested that Paduan Aristotelianism had a decisive impact on the making of modern science, and in particular on the philosophy of Galileo Galilei, and that this influence was attributable to the advanced theories of scientific method elaborated at the University of Padua in the Renaissance. The Paduan school had as its ancestor Pietro d’Abano (1257–1316/1317), who, in his Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum, et praecipue medicorum, established Aristotle’s Analytica Posteriora as the chief point of reference for the study of natural philosophy. This school would subsequently be developed by authors such as Paul of Venice (1368–1429), Agostino Nifo (1473–1538), Bernardino Tomitano (1517–1576), and finally its most important exponent, Jacopo Zabarella (1533–1589), who improved scientific method to the point that his theories were influential on the first experimental philosophers and on early scientists. Randall began his studies from a well-defined intellectual background. Few previous scholars had dealt with Paduan Aristotelianism, and historians such as Ernst Rénan, Francesco Fiorentino, Pietro Ragnisco, and Erminio Troilo were concerned mainly with the problem of the immortality of the soul and with the presence of Averroistic traces, rather than with the methodology of science.
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Notes
- 1.
John H. Randall, ‘The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1 (1940), 177–206.
- 2.
Cf. John H. Randall, The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science (Padua, 1961), 13–68.
- 3.
Randall, ‘The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua’, 185–186.
- 4.
On Paul of Venice cf. Zdzislaw Kuksewicz, ‘La teoria dell’anima in Paolo Veneto’, in Luigi Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna (Padua, 1983), 325–348; Francesco Bottin, ‘Paolo Veneto e il problema degli universali’, in Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto, 459–476; Alessandro D. Corti, ‘Il problema della conoscibilità del singolare nella gnoseologia di Paolo Veneto’, Bollettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 98 (1992), 323–382; Id., Esistenza e verità. Forme e strutture del reale in Paolo Veneto e nel pensiero filosofico del tardo Medioevo (Rome, 1996).
- 5.
On Tomitano cf. Enzo Riondato, ‘Per uno studio di Bernardino Tomitano filosofo’, in Aristotelismo padovano e filosofia aristotelica (Florence, 1960), 221–229; Id., ‘Momento accademico e filosofico nella prefazione di G. Breznicio alla logica aristotelica di Bernardino Tomitano’, in Relazioni tra Padova e la Polonia (Padua, 1964), 67–74; Giovanni Papuli, ‘La teoria del regressus come metodo scientifico negli autori della Scuola di Padova’, in Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, 221–277; Maria R. Davi, Bernardino Tomitano, filosofo, medico e letterato (1517–1576) (Trieste, 1995); Maria T. Girardi, Il sapere e le lettere in Bernardino Tomitano (Milan, 1995).
- 6.
On Nifo cf. Ennio De Bellis, Il pensiero logico di Agostino Nifo (Lecce, 1998); Edward P. Mahoney, Two Aristotelians of the Italian Renaissance. Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo (Aldershot, 2000); Ennio De Bellis, Nicoletto Vernia e Agostino Nifo. Aspetti storiografici e metodologici (Lecce, 2003).
- 7.
Cf. Ernest Renan, Averroës et l’Averroïsme. Essai historique (Paris, 1852).
- 8.
Cf. Francesco Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi: studi storici su la scuola bolognese e padovana del secolo XVI (Florence, 1868).
- 9.
Pietro Ragnisco, ‘Una polemica di logica nell’Università di Padova nelle scuole di Bernardino Petrella e di Giacomo Zabarella’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 4 (1885/1886), 463–502; Id., ‘La polemica tra Francesco Piccolomini e Giacomo Zabarella nella Università di Padova’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 4 (1885/1886), 1217–1252; Id., ‘Carattere della filosofia patavina’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 5 (1886/1887), 271–308; Id., ‘Pietro Pomponazzi e Giacomo Zabarella nella questione dell’anima’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 6 (1886/1887), 949–996; Id., ‘Da Giacomo Zabarella a Claudio Berigardo, ossia prima e dopo Galileo nell’Università di Padova’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 7 (1893/1894), 474–518.
- 10.
Erminio Troilo, ‘L’averroismo padovano’, Atti della XXVI riunione della Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze, 3 (1938), 255–286; Id., Averroismo e aristotelismo padovano (Padua, 1939).
- 11.
Against Randall’s general interpretation or one of its aspects cf. Neal W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York-London, 1960), XIII–XVI; Eugenio Garin, ‘Gli umanisti e la scienza’, Rivista di filosofia, 52 (1961), 259–278; Neal W. Gilbert, ‘Galileo and the School of Padua’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1–2 (1963), 223–231; Eugenio Garin, Scienza e vita civile nel Rinascimento italiano (Rome-Bari, 1965); Paola Zambelli, ‘Rinnovamento umanistico, progresso tecnologico e teorie filosofiche alle origini della rivoluzione scientifica’, Studi storici, 6 (1965), 507–546; Neal W. Gilbert, ‘Renaissance Aristotelianism and Its Fate: Some Observations and Problems’, in John P. Anton (ed.), Naturalism and Historical Understanding. Essays on the Philosophy of John Hermann Randall (Albany, 1967), 42–52; Charles B. Schmitt, A Critical Survey and Bibliography of Studies on Renaissance Aristotelianism 1958–1969 (Padua, 1971), 38–46; Id., ‘Aristotelianism in the Veneto and the Origins of Modern Science: Some considerations on the Problem of Continuity’, in Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, 104–124.
- 12.
Gilbert, ‘Galileo and the School of Padua’, 224.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Ibid. 230.
- 17.
Cf. Schmitt, ‘Aristotelianism in the Veneto and the Origins of Modern Science: Some Considerations on the Problem of Continuity’, 107–109.
- 18.
Cf. Charles B. Schmitt, ‘Filosofia e scienza nelle università italiane del XVI secolo’, in Il Rinascimento. Interpretazioni e problemi (Rome-Bari, 1979), 353–398; Charles B. Schmitt, ‘Science in the Italian Universities in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, in Maurice Crosland (ed.), The Emergence of Science in Western Europe (London, 1975), 35–56.
- 19.
On the peculiarities of the Padua-Venice axis, cf. Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, ‘Attività filosofico-editoriale aristotelica dell’Umanesimo veneziano’, in Vittore Branca (ed.), Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano (Florence, 1964), 245–262; Bruno Nardi, Saggi sulla cultura veneta del Quattro e Cinquecento (Padua, 1972), 3–98; Enzo Riondato, ‘Aristotelismo ed editoria scientifica del Cinquecento a Venezia e nel Veneto’, in Trattati scientifici nel Veneto fra il XV e il XVI secolo (Venice, 1985), IX-XXI; Giovanni Santinello, Tradizione e dissenso nella filosofia veneta (Padua, 1991), 5–9, 162–176.
- 20.
Cf. Cesare Vasoli, ‘Su alcuni problemi e discussioni logiche del Cinquecento italiano’, in Id., Studi sulla cultura del Rinascimento (Manduria, 1968), 257–344, esp. 261–262; Charles B. Schmitt, ‘Towards a Reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism’, History of Science, 11 (1970), 159–193, esp. 160. On the impact of Simplicius on sixteenth-century readings of Aristotle cf. Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull’aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI (Florence, 1958), 365–442.
- 21.
Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 11. On this topic cf. Philip L. Drew, ‘Some Notes on Zabarella’s and Cremonini’s Interpretation of Aristotle’s Philosophy of Nature’, in Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, 647–660. Pietro Ragnisco sarcastically notes the divergence of Aristotelianisms in Padua: ‘it is reasonable to believe that, if [Zabarella] had been a contemporary of Galileo in Padua, he would not have given the unfortunate impression of the Paduan philosophy given by his successor, the fool Cremonini’. Cf. Ragnisco, ‘La polemica tra Francesco Piccolomini e Giacomo Zabarella nella Università di Padova’, 1252.
- 22.
Cf. John H. Randall, ‘Paduan Aristotelianism Reconsidered’, in Paul O. Kristeller and Edward Mahoney (ed.), Philosophy and Humanism (Leiden, 1976), 275–282.
- 23.
Charles B. Schmitt, ‘William Harvey and Renaissance Aristotelianism. The Praefatio to De generatione animalium (1651)’, in Gundolf Keil and Rudolf Schmitz (eds.), Humanismus und Medizin (Weinheim, 1984), 119–120.
- 24.
Cf. Alexandre Koyré, ‘Galileo and Plato’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 4 (1943), 400–428; Id., ‘Galileo and the Scientific Revolution of the Seventeenth Century’, The Philosophical Review, 52 (1943), 333–348.
- 25.
William F. Edwards, ‘Randall on the Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua – A Continuing Reappraisal’, in John P. Anton (ed.), Naturalism and Historical Understanding (New York, 1967), 53–68, esp. 54.
- 26.
Cassirer subsequently sustained the primarily Platonic character of modern science; cf. Ernst Cassirer, ‘Galileo’s Platonism’, in Studies and Essays in the History of Science and Learning Offered in Homage to George Sarton (New York, 1946), 276–297.
- 27.
Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit (Berlin, 1922), vol. 1, 144.
- 28.
Ibid. 141.
- 29.
Cf. Cesare Vasoli, ‘Jacopo Zabarella e la natura della logica’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 1 (2011), 1–22.
- 30.
Cf. Paolo Rossi, ‘Aristotelici e moderni: le ipotesi e la natura’, in Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, 125–154, esp. 125. On the problem of the continuity between medieval, Renaissance and modern science cf. Garin, Scienza e vita civile nel Rinascimento italiano, VI-VIII.
- 31.
Ibid. 151.
- 32.
Ibid. 153.
- 33.
William F. Edwards, ‘Paduan Aristotelianism and the Origins of Modern Theories of Method’, in Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, 205–220, esp. 206. Timothy J. Reiss follows Edwards’ suggestion in his reconstruction of the impact of Zabarella’s methodology on Descartes, cf. Timothy J. Reiss, ‘Neo-Aristotle and Method. Between Zabarella and Descartes’, in Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster and John Sutton (eds.), Descartes’ Natural Philosophy (London, 2000), 195–227.
- 34.
Ibid. 220.
- 35.
Cf. Angelo Crescini, Le origini del metodo analitico. Il Cinquecento (Trieste, 1965), 168. In opposition to Cassirer, Randall, Garin, Gilbert, Corsano, Risse, Crescini, and Vasoli, Giovanni Papuli is the only one to challenge the claim that Zabarella was the culmination of the School of Padua. In particular Papuli disagrees with the interpretation that Zabarella has the merit of separating logic from metaphysics on the basis of his instrumental conception of logic. Cf. Giovanni Papuli, Girolamo Balduino. Ricerche sulla logica della Scuola di Padova nel Rinascimento (Manduria, 1967), 11–12.
- 36.
Cf. Wilhelm Risse, Einführung, in Jacobi Zabarellae Opera Logica (Hildesheim, 1966), V.
- 37.
Cf. Mario Mignucci, L’argomentazione dimostrativa in Aristotele. Commento agli Analitici secondi (Padua, 1975).
- 38.
On the influence of Zabarella in Protestant areas cf. Peter Petersen, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen Deutschland (Leipzig, 1921); Giorgio Tonelli, ‘Zabarella inspirateur de Baumgarten, ou l’origine de la connexion entre esthétique et logique’, Revue d’esthétique, 9 (1956), 182–192; Cesare Vasoli, ‘Giulio Pace e la diffusione europea di alcuni temi aristotelici padovani’, in Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, 1009–1034; Ian Backus, ‘The Teaching of Logic in Two Protestant Academies at the End of the Sixteenth Century: Reception of Zabarella in Strasbourg and Geneva’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 90 (1989), 240–251; Friedrich Müller, ‘Der Begriff der Methode in der Logica Hamburgensis: Jungius und Zabarella’, in Peter Klein, Praktische Logik. Traditionen und Tendenzen (Göttingen 1990), 29–55; Francesco Raimondi, ‘La filosofia naturale di G. Zabarella e la scienza moderna: connessioni e divergenze’, Physis, 31 (1994), 372–391; Gregorio Piaia (ed.), La presenza dell’aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità (Padua, 2002); Jon Rohls, ‘Aristotelische Methodik und protestantische Theologie: Von Melanchthon zu Zabarella’, in Günter Frank (ed.), Melanchthon und der Calvinismus (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 2005), 75–105; Riccardo Pozzo, ‘Umdeutungen der aristotelischen Habituslehre in der Renaissance’, in Günter Frank and Andreas Speer (eds.), Der Aristotelismus in der frühen Neuzeit. Kontinuität oder Wiederaneigung? (Wiesbaden, 2007), 259–272; Marco Sgarbi, ‘Kant, Aristotle and the Rise of Facultative Logic’, in Ennio De Bellis (ed.), Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition (Soveria Mannelli, 2008), 405–416; Marco Sgarbi, La Kritik der reinen Vernunft nel contesto della tradizione logica aristotelica (Hildesheim, 2010).
- 39.
Cf. Alfonso Maierù (ed.), English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries. Acts of the 5th European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics, Rome, 10–14 November 1980 (Naples, 1982).
- 40.
Rossi, ‘Aristotelici e moderni: le ipotesi e la natura’, 142.
- 41.
Cf. Gregorio Piaia, ‘Storia della filosofia e decolonizzazione del passato’, in Id., Il lavoro storico-filosofico. Questioni di metodo ed esiti didattici (Padua, 2007), 11–30, esp. 19–21.
- 42.
Gilbert, ‘Renaissance Aristotelianism and Its Fate: Some Observations and Problems’, 42.
- 43.
Gilbert, ‘Galileo and the School of Padua’, 227. On fourteenth-century Aristotelian empiricism cf. Henrik Lagerlund, ‘The Changing Face of Aristotelian Empiricism in the Fourteenth Century’, Quaestio, 10 (2010), 315–327.
- 44.
Charles B. Schmitt, La tradizione aristotelica: Fra Italia e Inghilterra (Naples, 1985), 22.
- 45.
Ibid. 25.
- 46.
Charles B. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England (Kingston-Montreal, 1983), 221. Cf. Schmitt, ‘Towards a Reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism’, 159–163, esp. 160: ‘the Aristotelians of the Renaissance do not form a single compact school, in any but the vaguest of senses’. Cf. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, 10–63. On the difficulty of characterizing what precisely ‘Aristotelian’ means, cf. Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, ‘La tradition aristotélicienne dans l’histoire des idées’, in Id., Opuscula. Latin Aristotle (Amsterdam, 1972), 405–424.
- 47.
Cf. Schmitt, ‘Aristotelianism in the Veneto and the Origins of Modern Science: Some Considerations on the Problem of Continuity’, 104–108.
- 48.
Antonino Poppi, Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano (Padua, 1991), 14.
- 49.
Cf. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, 89–99.
- 50.
Feingold has been the first to question this general assumption, arguing that Ramist texts rarely dominated the small section of the university curriculum devoted to logic and rhetoric, that Ramist textbooks were used in conjunction with other texts, and that it is wrong to assume that Ramism was the prevailing logical system in England. Cf. Mordechai Feingold, ‘English Ramism: A Reinterpretation’, in Mordechai Feingold, Joseph S. Freedman and Wolfgang Rother (eds.), The Influence of Petrus Ramus (Basel, 2001), 132–134.
- 51.
Cf. James D. Collins, The British Empiricists: Locke, Berkeley, Hume (Milwaukee, 1967); Jonathan Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume. Central Themes (Oxford, 1971); Ram A. Mall, Der operative Begriff des Geistes: Locke, Berkeley, Hume (Freiburg-Munich, 1984); John Dunn and Alfred J. Ayer (eds.), The British Empiricists: Locke, Berkeley, Hume (Oxford, 1992); Renée Bouveresse-Quilliot, L’empirisme anglais: Locke, Berkeley, Hume (Paris, 1997); Stephen Priest, The British Empiricists (London, 2006).
- 52.
Schmitt, La tradizione aristotelica: Fra Italia e Inghilterra, 11.
- 53.
Cf. James G. Buickerood, ‘The Natural History of the Understanding: Locke and the Rise of Facultative Logic in the Eighteenth Century’, History and Philosophy of Logic, 6 (1985), 157–190. This is the reason why I do not consider John Sergeant’s thought, whose Aristotelian work The Method to Science (London, 1696) must be carefully measured against Locke’s empiricism, which cannot be carried out in this volume. The second edition refers directly to Locke’s Essay, cf. Solid Philosophy asserted, against the Fancies of the Ideists or the Method to Science farther illustrated with Reflexions on Mr. Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding (London, 1697).
- 54.
On these topics cf. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985); Steven Shapin, ‘House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England’, Isis, 77 (1988), 373–404; Micheal Hunter, Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain (Woodbridge, 1995); Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1995); Sarah Hutton, ‘In Dialogue with Thomas Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish’s Natural Philosophy’, Women’s Writing, 4 (1997), 421–432; Micheal Hunter, Robert Boyle (1627–91): Scrupulosity and Science (Woodbridge, 2000); Peter R. Anstey, The Philosophy of Robert Boyle (London, 2000); Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685 (Oxford, 2006), 352–399; Kourken Michaelian, ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Epistemology’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 17 (2009), 31–53; Sorana Corneanu, Regimens of the Mind: Boyle, Locke, and the Early Modern Cultura Animi Tradition (Chicago, 2012).
- 55.
The recent volume, Tom Sorell, John G. A. Rogers and Jill Kraye (eds.), Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy: Seventeenth-Century Thinkers on Demonstrative Knowledge from Initial Principles (Dordrecht, 2010), has definitively dismanteld this picture.
- 56.
Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England, 37.
- 57.
Ibid. 6.
- 58.
Cf. Wilburn S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England 1500–1700 (New York, 1961). E. Jennifer Ashworth rightly says that Howell’s research ‘can only be described as bizarre. In general, Howell’s work must be handled with extreme caution, for his details are often inaccurate and his judgment faulty’, E. Jennifer Ashworth, ‘Introduction’, in Robert Sanderson, Logicae artis compendium (Bologna, 1985), IX–LV, esp. XXIII.
- 59.
These monographic studies will be considered in the particular treatment of each author.
- 60.
Cf. Ivo Thomas, ‘Medieval Aftermath: Oxford Logic and Logicians of the Seventeenth Century’, in Oxford Studies Presented to Daniel Callus (Oxford, 1964), 297–311.
- 61.
Cf. Lisa Jardine, ‘The Place of Dialectic Teaching in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge’, Studies in the Renaissance, 21 (1974), 31–62; ead., ‘Humanism and the Sixteenth-Century Cambridge Arts Course’, History of Education, 4 (1975), 13–31.
- 62.
Cf. James McConica, ‘Humanism and Aristotle in Tudor Oxford’, The English Historical Review, 371 (1979), 291–317.
- 63.
Cf. John A. Trentman, ‘The Study of Logic and Language in England in the Early 17th Century’, Historiographia linguistica, 3 (1976), 179–201.
- 64.
Ibid. 179–180.
- 65.
Ibid. 183, 189.
- 66.
Ibid. 180.
- 67.
Cf. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, 110–118.
- 68.
Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England, 8.
- 69.
Ibid. 37.
- 70.
Ibid. 76.
- 71.
Cf. Ashworth, Introduction, IX–LV; E. Jennifer Ashworth, ‘Logic in Late Sixteenth-Century England: Humanist Dialectic and the New Aristotelianism’, Studies in Philology, 88 (1991), 224–236.
- 72.
On philosophy in British Isles before Locke cf. Jill Kraye, ‘British Philosophy Before Locke’, in Steven Nadler (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford, 2002), 283–297.
- 73.
Ashworth, ‘Introduction’, LIV–LV.
- 74.
Cf. Hannah Dawson, Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, 2007).
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Sgarbi, M. (2012). Introduction. In: The Aristotelian Tradition and the Rise of British Empiricism. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 32. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4951-1_1
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