C.H. Lüthy - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by C.H. Lüthy
Christoph Lüthy & Elena Nicoli, eds., Atoms, Corpuscles and Minima in the Renaissance, 2023
This book chapter retraces the use of the concepts of 'minima', 'corpuscula' and 'atomi' in the w... more This book chapter retraces the use of the concepts of 'minima', 'corpuscula' and 'atomi' in the works of the Louvain professor of medicine and imperial physician Nicolaus Biesius (1516-1573) and shows for what (rather surprising) reasons he started relying ever more strongly on atoms, despite the fact that he could not possibly be considered an 'atomist'.
Was there such a thing as a 'Renaissance revival of atomism'? The assumption that there was requi... more Was there such a thing as a 'Renaissance revival of atomism'? The assumption that there was requires that there was such a thing as 'atomism' in the ��rst place, and hence a school of thought that could be, and was, revived. But did the Renaissance-here canonically de��ned as the period AD 1400-1600possess such a category? As was explained in the introduction to the present volume, it did not. To the question of whether there were perhaps Renaissance authors who thought of themselves as 'atomists,' as we have seen, the answer again is no. What we can say with certainty is that we do ��nd Renaissance philosophers and physicians who relied on small bodies-particles, minima, atoms, corpuscles-in their explanations of physical phenomena. Would it be anachronistic to describe their endeavors in terms of a revival of atomism? Yes, it would. But how else, then, should we describe what happened? How should we, as historians, frame the shift in explanatory patterns that these authors seem to illustrate?1 By means of a detailed case study, this chapter will try to document thatas historians-instead of pitting 'atomism' against 'hylemorphism' (another term unknown in the Renaissance), we should take note of the multifarious reasons that led to an increased explanatory reliance on small particles, without having to assume that the authors thereby necessarily committed themselves to the revival of an ancient school of thought.2 We should be alert to the fact that natural philosophers and physicians, under the in��uence of the most diverse ancient or more recent sources or on the basis of empirical evidence, occasionally and sometimes even routinely invoked small particles in their explanations, sometimes calling them 'atoms' and sometimes something else, without thereby making any ideological commitment to an atomistic ontology or a philosophical sect.
Isis vol. 107, no. 3, 2017
Efthymios Nicolaidis et al. open their essay with what amounts to a paradox: they maintain that O... more Efthymios Nicolaidis et al. open their essay with what amounts to a paradox: they maintain that Orthodox Christianity "scarcely participated in the making of the new European science" but also quote John William Draper's positive assessment of the openness of the Orthodox Church to the sciences. Whether they manage to resolve this paradox is unclear. This response to their overview suggests that they neglect two key elements: the categorical difference between medieval 'scientia' and modern science; and the role of institutions such as universities and scientific societies. Furthermore, to gauge the relation of Orthodox Christianity to modern science, one would also have had to take the Russian Orthodox Church into account, as after the fall of Constantinople, the Greek Orthodox Church was deprived of much of its political and institutional power.
Physis, 2022
In this article, the editor of Early Science and Medicine addresses a series of dilemmas facing j... more In this article, the editor of Early Science and Medicine addresses a series of dilemmas facing journals in the history of science. The first is thematic: is 'science' a result of an historical line that runs from the ancient Middle East through Greece up to the European Revolution; and if it isn't, how can a journal do justice to alternative trajectories? The second, which is related to the first, is definitional: where does one trace the boundary line between what falls within the domain of the history of 'science' and what doesn't? The third dilemma is editorial: how does one balance the sometimes contrary criteria of scholarly versus high-impact publications? The fourth and fifth dilemmas have to do with the advent of the internet age: how is a journal editor to respond to the challenges of online and open-access publishing? The article ends with some observations on the general development of ancient, medieval and early-modern history of science and medicine.
Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and His Reception, eds. D. Antoine-Mahut & S. Roux, 2019
Early Science and Medicine, 1996
Recent scholarship, focusing on the rapid decline of microscopy after the late 1680's, has sh... more Recent scholarship, focusing on the rapid decline of microscopy after the late 1680's, has shown that the limitations of microscopy and the ambivalent meaning of its findings led to a wide-spread sense of frustration with the new instrument. The present article tries to connect this fall from favor with the microscope's equally surprising but hitherto little noticed late rise to prominence. The crucial point is that when the microscope, more than a decade after the telescope, finally managed to arouse the interest of natural philosophers, it did so as a corpuscularian tool, and as such it came to share the difficult fate of seventeenth-century corpuscularianism. The essay ends with the claim that the fall of microscopy was not only due to the failure of microscopy to corroborate corpuscularianism, but also to the changing definition of natural philosophy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and to the separation of the domains of living matter (to which the...
Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 2010
Christoph Lüthy & Elena Nicoli, eds., Atoms, Corpuscles and Minima in the Renaissance, 2023
This book chapter retraces the use of the concepts of 'minima', 'corpuscula' and 'atomi' in the w... more This book chapter retraces the use of the concepts of 'minima', 'corpuscula' and 'atomi' in the works of the Louvain professor of medicine and imperial physician Nicolaus Biesius (1516-1573) and shows for what (rather surprising) reasons he started relying ever more strongly on atoms, despite the fact that he could not possibly be considered an 'atomist'.
Was there such a thing as a 'Renaissance revival of atomism'? The assumption that there was requi... more Was there such a thing as a 'Renaissance revival of atomism'? The assumption that there was requires that there was such a thing as 'atomism' in the ��rst place, and hence a school of thought that could be, and was, revived. But did the Renaissance-here canonically de��ned as the period AD 1400-1600possess such a category? As was explained in the introduction to the present volume, it did not. To the question of whether there were perhaps Renaissance authors who thought of themselves as 'atomists,' as we have seen, the answer again is no. What we can say with certainty is that we do ��nd Renaissance philosophers and physicians who relied on small bodies-particles, minima, atoms, corpuscles-in their explanations of physical phenomena. Would it be anachronistic to describe their endeavors in terms of a revival of atomism? Yes, it would. But how else, then, should we describe what happened? How should we, as historians, frame the shift in explanatory patterns that these authors seem to illustrate?1 By means of a detailed case study, this chapter will try to document thatas historians-instead of pitting 'atomism' against 'hylemorphism' (another term unknown in the Renaissance), we should take note of the multifarious reasons that led to an increased explanatory reliance on small particles, without having to assume that the authors thereby necessarily committed themselves to the revival of an ancient school of thought.2 We should be alert to the fact that natural philosophers and physicians, under the in��uence of the most diverse ancient or more recent sources or on the basis of empirical evidence, occasionally and sometimes even routinely invoked small particles in their explanations, sometimes calling them 'atoms' and sometimes something else, without thereby making any ideological commitment to an atomistic ontology or a philosophical sect.
Isis vol. 107, no. 3, 2017
Efthymios Nicolaidis et al. open their essay with what amounts to a paradox: they maintain that O... more Efthymios Nicolaidis et al. open their essay with what amounts to a paradox: they maintain that Orthodox Christianity "scarcely participated in the making of the new European science" but also quote John William Draper's positive assessment of the openness of the Orthodox Church to the sciences. Whether they manage to resolve this paradox is unclear. This response to their overview suggests that they neglect two key elements: the categorical difference between medieval 'scientia' and modern science; and the role of institutions such as universities and scientific societies. Furthermore, to gauge the relation of Orthodox Christianity to modern science, one would also have had to take the Russian Orthodox Church into account, as after the fall of Constantinople, the Greek Orthodox Church was deprived of much of its political and institutional power.
Physis, 2022
In this article, the editor of Early Science and Medicine addresses a series of dilemmas facing j... more In this article, the editor of Early Science and Medicine addresses a series of dilemmas facing journals in the history of science. The first is thematic: is 'science' a result of an historical line that runs from the ancient Middle East through Greece up to the European Revolution; and if it isn't, how can a journal do justice to alternative trajectories? The second, which is related to the first, is definitional: where does one trace the boundary line between what falls within the domain of the history of 'science' and what doesn't? The third dilemma is editorial: how does one balance the sometimes contrary criteria of scholarly versus high-impact publications? The fourth and fifth dilemmas have to do with the advent of the internet age: how is a journal editor to respond to the challenges of online and open-access publishing? The article ends with some observations on the general development of ancient, medieval and early-modern history of science and medicine.
Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and His Reception, eds. D. Antoine-Mahut & S. Roux, 2019
Early Science and Medicine, 1996
Recent scholarship, focusing on the rapid decline of microscopy after the late 1680's, has sh... more Recent scholarship, focusing on the rapid decline of microscopy after the late 1680's, has shown that the limitations of microscopy and the ambivalent meaning of its findings led to a wide-spread sense of frustration with the new instrument. The present article tries to connect this fall from favor with the microscope's equally surprising but hitherto little noticed late rise to prominence. The crucial point is that when the microscope, more than a decade after the telescope, finally managed to arouse the interest of natural philosophers, it did so as a corpuscularian tool, and as such it came to share the difficult fate of seventeenth-century corpuscularianism. The essay ends with the claim that the fall of microscopy was not only due to the failure of microscopy to corroborate corpuscularianism, but also to the changing definition of natural philosophy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and to the separation of the domains of living matter (to which the...
Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 2010