Jole Shackelford

A philosophical path for Paracelsian medicine : the ideas, intellectual context, and influence of Petrus Severinus (1540/2-1602)

Cookbooks as Historical Source Material Menus How Cookbooks Change Cookbook Introductions The Development of a Bourgeois Consciousness Bread The Growth of Domesticity Maps of Denmark The Development of Nationalism Dannebrog Potatoes and Danish National Identity Christiane Rosen, Cookbook Author How Recipes Change Afterword Notes Index.

Early Reception of Paracelsian Theory: Severinus and Erastus

Petrus Severinus et Thomas Erastus furent parmi les premiers physiciens a publier des reponses detaillees aux theories du physicien et du Reformateur allemand Theophrastus Paracelsus. Les Idea medicinae de Severinus expliquerent la metaphysique de Paracelsus a plusieurs generations de lecteurs. En 1572, Erastus publia sa critique vigoureuse de la philosophie de Paracelsus et ses consequences religieuses. Il utilisa les Idea medicinae comme source et attaquait par consequent non seulement Paracelsus, mais egalement Severinus

Documenting the factual and the artifactual: Ole Worm and public knowledge

During the course of his life, Worm made an epistemological shift from the sometimes secretive world of the late Renaissance Neoplatonist and Paracelsian philosopher, from the chemical laborant protecting proprietary processes, to the more open collection of natural and artificial particulars, objects that were stabile, public authorities, regardless of the theories that human minds might spin.

Paracelsianism and the orthodox Lutheran rejection of vital philosophy in early seventeenth-century Denmark

Paracelsian medicine and natural philosophy was formed during the Radical Reformation and incorporated metaphysical propositions that were incompatible with the Lutheran confession as codified in the Confessio Augustana and elaborated in the ultra-orthodox Formula of Concord. Although Paracelsian ideas and practices were endorsed by important philosophers and physicians in late-sixteenth century Denmark without raising serious alarm, the imposition of strict Lutheran orthodoxy in the Danish Church and a concomitant resurgence of Aristotelian philosophy drew attention to the religious heterodoxies inherent in Paracelsianism. Unacceptable theological and religious propositions, which reached Denmark in Rosicrucian texts and were implicit in certain medical and philosophical treatises, were in many cases inseparable from core Paracelsian concepts, with the result that Danish academic philosophers, physicians, and theologians rejected Paracelsian ideas except where they could be accommodated to acceptable Galenic and Aristotelian interpretations. When this was done, such ideas are arguably no longer Paracelsian in any meaningful way.

Transplantation and Corpuscular Identity in Paracelsian Vital Philosophy

Long recognized as an important antecedent to the development of modern chemistry, Paracelsian chemical philosophy is often left out of historians’ reconstruction of “chymical” matter theory in the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, owing to a thematic incommensurability between the new mechanistic theories and the vital philosophy of the Paracelsians. As a result, vital philosophy is more often characterized in terms of “correspondences” and “affinities” than as an explanation for material transformation. This paper explores a key component of vitalist matter theory, Paracelsian semina (seeds) as basic organic entities and principles of development, and how the concept of their “transplantation” illuminates both their inner vital nature and their spatialization as material principles. The result is a concept of chemical-mechanical action that is far different from the mechanical matter theory of the Cartesians. By defining temporality as an essential characteristic of seminal matter, the late sixteenth-century Paracelsian theorist Petrus Severinus provided a metaphysically sound basis for explaining internal agency as a foundational property of material being. Severinus’ conception of semina was widely read and commented on by medical writers and natural philosophers involved in constructing the “new science” of the seventeenth century.