Körpergefühl und Raumvorstellung: Leonardo und Descartes

“Experience and the conception of the world in science in transition to modern times” is the general subject. There are two different points to be made clear, i.e. 1. That the conception of the world had to be made imaginable by art before it could be taken over by science. The central perspective dates back to about three centuries before the time Descartes developed the co-ordinate system. 2. Furthermore it should be taken into account that it was first of all due to the lead of the painters (especially in the Italy of the Quattrocento’) that the possibility of making experiences had changed. In a space opened by a perspective view and seemingly thus appearing as measurable even the painted figures acquire a new reality. Due to his anatomic studies Leonardo could treat the natural movement of the figures shown in his paintings. It was the artists who first of all investigated optics and anatomy before relations could be measured with the aid of scientific methods ami before quantities — instead of qualities — could become the base of unbiased science, as called for by Galilei in 1623.     

Animal Bones from the Late Neolithic Site of Ponte da Azambuja 2 (Évora,Portugal)

Neolithic faunal assemblages are scarce in Portugal, and although some trends related to the beginning of domestication are now becoming understood, more data and further zooarchaeological analyses are necessary to fully understand them. Ponte da Azambuja 2 is a set of three Late Neolithic ditch enclosures located in the Alentejo region, Southern Portugal. It was discovered in 2008 by the archaeological unit Crivarque during the construction of a new irrigation system. Ditch enclosure 1 was excavated in two trenches, Locus 1 and Locus 2. A small faunal assemblage was recovered, showing high fragmentation mainly due to post‐depositional processes, which made the interpretation rather problematic. Although animal herding strategies are difficult to assess, it was possible to confirm the domesticate status of some of the taxa. Domestication appears to have been complemented by hunting – both red deer and leporids being present. The identification of burning, cut marks and worked bone confirms an anthropogenic faunal accumulation. Worked bone fragments suggest needle production and the production of potential ornaments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Sixteenth-Century Draft Plan of Lisbon’s Western Suburb

The National Library of Brazil has in its cartographic collection a little-known late sixteenth-century ichnographic plan of Lisbon, Portugal, showing the city’s western extramural suburb. In this article the unfinished draft plan is analysed for what it reveals of the mapmakers’ surveying methods. Comparison of the plan with other historical sources suggests that it was produced by Giovanni Vincenzo Casale and Alexandre Massai for military purposes between 1590 and 1597. This makes it the oldest ichnographic plan of Lisbon known to date, replacing the better known ichnographic plan of Lisbon signed by João Nunes Tinoco in 1650.     

In search of a spiritus: Francesco Patrizi on tides

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes two chapters of Francesco Patrizi’s Nova de universis philosophia that deal with a topic widely debated in European intellectual circles at the time: the origin of tides. By deconstructing Patrizi’s views on the phenomenon of ebb and flow, this paper places these chapters of Patrizi’s opus magnum into a larger context and shows how, with the use of novel philosophical arguments, he sought to replace what he considered an outdated theory of tides.     

略论傅作霖在华之工作

本文研究葡萄牙传教士傅作霖入华进京的背景、在华期间的活动情况和科学工作,特别指出傅作霖长期参与和主持钦天监的日常工作,参与天文仪器制作,乾隆时期还参与了大地测量工作,对中西科学交流做出了贡献。     

Phaedrus’ Cicadas: Patrizi's Dialoghi and vernacular rhetoric

ABSTRACT

In his Dieci dialoghi della retorica (Venice, 1562), Francesco Patrizi analyses the nature of language and the historical developments of oratory, taking part in the debate on this art reinforced by the spread of the Aristotelian Rhetoric. This gave him the opportunity to consider the origins of human social life and explain the traditional rhetorical teaching in an anthropological perspective. He also argued against the civic use of oratory as presented in some contemporary treatises on it, written in the vernacular.     

Francesco Patrizi’s concept of “nature”: presence and refutation of Stoicism

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes the ways in which, in his Nova de Universis Philosophia, Francesco Patrizi uses, adopts, and, in some cases, rejects the Stoic philosophical tradition. Although, at first glance, most of Patrizi’s remarks on Stoicism and Stoic understanding of nature are critical – as this article demonstrates – he widely relied on Stoic teaching that he sought to combine with Neoplatonism and the prisca theologia doctrine.     

Francesco Patrizi da Cherso and the anti-Aristotelian tradition: interpreting the Discussiones Peripateticae (1581)

ABSTRACT

This paper tries to present a different view of Francesco Patrizi’s anti-Aristotelian philology such as it transpires in his masterful monograph of 1581, the Discussiones Peripateticae, the influence of which was widely felt in seventeenth-century Europe. The book is the product of a learned, Hellenizing, and deeply inspired critique of a major doctrinal corpus from classical antiquity, and it is usually taken as a stepping stone in a self-righteous fight by “modern” philosophers to replace Aristotelianism as the dominant academic system. This essay is revisionist on the second of these accounts.