3. The Italian Philosophy of Nature.
We turn now from the restorers of ancient doctrines and their opponents to the men who, continuing the opposition to the authority of Aristotle, point out new paths for the study of nature. The physician, Hieronymus Cardanus of Milan (1501-76), whose inclinations toward the fanciful were restrained, though not suppressed, by his mathematical training, may be considered the forerunner of the school. While the people should accept the dogmas of the Church with submissive faith, the thinker may and should subordinate all things to the truth. The wise man belongs to that rare class who neither deceive nor are deceived; others are either deceivers or deceived, or both. In his theory of nature, Cardanus advances two principles: one passive, matter (the three cold and moist elements), and an active, formative one, the world-soul, which, pervading the All and bringing it into unity, appears as warmth and light. The causes of motion are attraction and repulsion, which in higher beings become love and hate. Even superhuman spirits, the demons, are subject to the mechanical laws of nature.
The standard bearer of the Italian philosophy of nature was Bernardinus Telesius[1] of Cosenza (1508-88; De Rerum Natura juxta Propria Principia, 1565, enlarged 1586), the founder of a scientific society in Naples called the Telesian, or after the name of his birthplace, the Cosentian Academy. Telesius maintained that the Aristotelian doctrine must be replaced by an unprejudiced empiricism; that nature must be explained from itself, and by as few principles as possible. Beside inert matter, this requires only two active forces, on whose interaction all becoming and all life depend. These are warmth, which expands, and cold, which contracts; the former resides in the sun and
- ↑ Cf. on Telesius, Florentine, 2 vols., Naples, 1872-74; K. Heiland, Erkenntnisslehre und Ethik des Telesius, Doctor's Dissertation at Leipsic, 1891. Further, Rixner and Siber, Leben und Lehrmeinungen berühmter Physiker am Ende des XVI. und am Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts, Sulzbach (1819-26), 7 Hefte, 2d ed., 1829. Hefte 2-6 discuss Cardanus, Telesius, Patritius, Bruno, and Campanella; the first is devoted to Paracelsus, and the seventh to the older Van Helmont (Joh. Bapt.).
