New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought: Essays in the History of Science, Education and Philosophy in Memory of Charles B. Schmitt (review)

Abstract

298 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:2 APRIL 1992 John Henry and Sarah Hutton, eds. New Perspectiveson Renaissance Thought: Essaysin the Histo0 of Science, Education and Philosophy in Memory of Charles B. Schmitt. London: Duckworth & Co. Ltd. and the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 199o. Pp. xi + 3~4. Cloth, s It is a chastening irony that only Charles himself would be adequately equipped to write a proper review of this excellent collection. As the editors say, "the chapters in this book seem to range widely over an alarmingly diverse set of topics," yet the unifying factor is Charles Schmitt and his extraordinarily broad grasp of Renaissance philosophy and science. All but five of the contributions (those of Blackwell, Brockliss, Giard, Jardine, and Webster) were presented at a memorial symposium for Charles held in February a987 at the Warburg Institute, London, and both speakers and additional contributors "were asked to offer a paper which either extended some aspect of Charles's work or which reflected the influence of his approach to intellectual history" (vii). Accordingly, the volume as a whole reflects many of Schmitt's varied interests in the Renaissance, and presents abundant evidence of his presence in virtually every aspect of the contemporary history and historiography of Renaissance and early modern science and philosophy. The editors are to be congratulated in making that evidence publicly available in convenient form. It is sometimes better to be dully informative than invidiously selective, so here are the contributions in order of appearance: Dick Popkin on the role of Jewish antiChristian arguments in the rise of scepticism, that is, in Enlightenment critiques of religious belief; Charles Webster on Conrad Gessner's shaping of humanist attitudes to Paracelsus; Tom Settle on Egnazio Danti, cosmographer to the Tuscan court 0563-75), and his impact on sixteenth-century Florentine mathematical education; M. J. B. Allen on Ficino ("the father of Renaissance Hermetism," though in a Pickwickian sense) and the Corpus Hermeticum; Letizia Panizza on Italian humanists' use of Boethius to show the positive links between poetry and philosophy, not the opposition assumed by earlier readers of Consolation; Lisa Jardine on Gabriel Harvey's annotations in his copy of Livy's Decades and the Irish dimensions of Spenser's Faerie Qucene, and the relations of both to the English colonial experience in wild and unruly Ireland; Don Kelley on the idea of custom (altera natura), its relation to law and nature, and its links with the history of social science; Dilwyn Knox on gesture and universal languages (155o-a65o), including unexpected connections between the former and Ramist method; Eckhard Kessler throwing fresh light on Renaissance transformations of Aristotelianism; Richard Sorabji on infinite power in the Aristotelian tradition up to Averroes and Aquinas; John Murdoch comparing the medieval with the Renaissance Aristotle; Stephen Pumfrey on Neo-Aristotelianism and postGilbert magnetic philosophy, showing the explanatory inventiveness of the reformed Aristotelianism of the seventeenth century; a detailed study by Laurence Brockliss on the introduction of the Copernican theory into French colleges and the universities of Paris and Louvain (coU~gesde plein exercice, not exercise:passim, including the index); Nancy Siraisi on Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Vives, and Agrippa and their BOOK REVIEWS ~99 respective critiques of contemporary medicine, physiology and anatomy; Vivian Nutton on the curious and complicated story of Brasavala's prefaces Is/el to his printed commentary (1541) on Hippocrates' Aphorisms;J. W. Binns on Elizabeth I's visits to Cambridge and Oxford; Ian Maclean on the philosophical book trade in the European market 057o-163o), with special reference to the case of Ramus and his principal publisher Andr6 Wechel. Finally, Luce Giard writes an inspiring intellectual biography of Charles Schmitt as historian--"reconstructor of a history"--of Renaissance learning, and rounding off the volume is an invaluable bibliography of Charles's publications (books, articles, and reviews), compiled by Constance Blackwell. Other than the Preface, the collection is shy of a contribution from each of the editors. Admittedly, editing is a debilitating full-timejob, especially if it is to succeed, as is assuredly the case here. Yet it's a pity the volume does not include the couple of contributions informed prospective purchasers might expect to...