Ficino on the Exalted and Suffering Body: Comparing the Platonic Theology and On the Christian Religion

To what extent does Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic theology correspond to his Christian theology? This question, although too wide to grasp all at once, furnishes the inspiration for the following essay. Here I discuss the human body in the Platonic Theology — the human body as an intellectual helpmate, companion to the soul, and site of spiritual danger. I then consider the significance of the body in On the Christian Religion, Ficino’s major Christian theological statement. I show how the meaning of physical suffering in this latter treatise corresponds to the Platonic Theology and transcends it. I conclude the paper by arguing that physical suffering, for Ficino, embeds the Christian within the history of the Church

A Hot Mess: Girolamo Cardano, the Inquisition and the Soul

Girolamo Cardano makes a number of surprising, even shocking, claims about the soul in his De subtilitate, one of the most widely read works of natural philosophy in the sixteenth century. When he was finally investigated by the Roman Inquisition and the Index, these claims did not go unnoticed. This study will narrow in on three passages marked as heretical by the first Holy-Office censor of De subtilitate. It will consider the Inquisition’s priorities and ask about materialism, determinism, and conceptual inconsistency in Cardano’s views on the soul. The study will give special attention to the claim made by Cardano that souls can be reduced to celestial heat. In addition to De subtilitate, several other of Cardano’s works will be considered for added perspective, especially Contradicentium medicorum libri duodecim

Reading Cardano with the Roman inquisition : astrology, celestial physics and the force of heresy

In the first decades after the founding of the modern Roman Inquisition in 1542, Girolamo Cardano was the most prominent natural philosopher to face imprisonment and trial. A trove of Inquisitorial letters, decrees and censurae have survived, offering a detailed picture of how, in the early years of its existence, the Roman Inquisition placed theological boundaries around astrology and natural philosophy. This article will cover the trial and identify a critical point of contention: that Cardano allegedly naturalized heresy. It will suggest that we view the Cardano affair as a reaction against a natural philosophy threatening to constrain the Inquisition’s right to judge enemies and execute that judgment. Finally, this article will discuss how, in light of the Inquisition’s reading, we might consider Cardano’s astrology to accommodate Christian doctrine

Celestial Physics

It has long been recognized that astronomy was a catalyst of the Scientific Revolution, spurring on deeply consequential speculation about the nature of the cosmos and its physical principles. Yet the history of celestial physics is far richer than was thought a generation ago, and there is much to be learned about the origins of the field, particularly in the sixteenth century, when humanist activity brought forth a dazzling array of philosophical possibility—from reconsiderations of Aristotle and Islamicate commentary to the revival of Platonic, Epicurean, and Stoic worldviews. Celestial physics offered some of the most heated arguments for or against the Aristotelian cosmos, with controversial attempts to account for astronomical observation by integrating various causal innovations. This chapter will focus on a number of themes that mark celestial physics and cosmological speculation in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: the order of the celestial bodies and their nature, the relationship between celestial and terrestrial things, the question of celestial animism or vitalism, and the status of the divine in celestial nature

A Hot Mess: Girolamo Cardano, the Inquisition and the Soul

Girolamo Cardano makes a number of surprising, even shocking claims about the soul in his De subtilitate, one of the most widely read works of natural philosophy in the sixteenth century. When he was finally investigated by the Roman Inquisition and the Index, these claims did not go unnoticed. This study will narrow in on three passages marked as heretical by the first Holy Office censor of De subtilitate. It will consider the Inquisition’s priorities and ask about materialism, determinism, and conceptual inconsistency in Cardano’s views on the soul. The study will give special attention to the claim made by Cardano that souls can be reduced to celestial heat. In addition to De subtilitate, several of Cardano’s other works will be considered for added perspective, especially Contradicentium medicorum libri duodecim

Choice certainty and deliberative thinking in discrete choice experiments : A theoretical and empirical investigation

The Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control (ARCC) is funded by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute (2015-703549). This paper developed from discussions between Verity Watson and Dean Regier that were funded by the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia. Jonathan Sicsic acknowledges funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under REA grant agreement PCOFUND-GA-2013-609102, through the PRESTIGE programme coordinated by Campus France. He also benefited for this research from grants provided by the French National Institute for Cancer (Coordinator: Dr Nora Moumjid). The Health Economics Research Unit is funded by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Care Directorates. The usual disclaimer applies. We thank Aki Tsuchiya, Nicolas Krucien, Thijs Dekker, and all participants to the 5th workshop on non-market valuation for useful comments on previous drafts of the paper.Peer reviewedPostprin

5. Book Reviews and Notices

Reviews and Notices of Omodeo, Copernicus in the Cultural Debates of the Renaissance: Reception, Legacy, Transformation, Brill 2014; Gentilcore, Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine and Society, 1450-1800, Bloomsbury 2015; Whatmore, What is Intellectual History?, Polity 2016; Apel, Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds: Science and the Yellow Fever Controversy in the Early American Republic, Stanford UP 2016; Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, Polity 2016; Weeks, What is Sexual History?, Polity 2016

Book Review: The pursuit of harmony: Kepler on cosmos, confession, and community, by Aviva Rothman

Review of Aviva Rothman, The pursuit of harmony: Kepler on cosmos, confession, and communit

Logic, mathematics and natural light : Liddel on the foundations of knowledge

International audienc