The Renaissance witnessed an upsurge in explanations of natural events in terms of invisibly small particles - atoms, corpuscles, minima, monads and particles. The reasons for this development are as varied as are the entities that were proposed. This volume covers the period from the earliest commentaries on Lucretius' De rerum natura to the sources of Newton's alchemical texts. Contributors examine key developments in Renaissance physiology, meteorology, metaphysics, theology, chymistry and historiography, all of which came to assign a greater explanatory weight to minute entities. These contributions show that there was no simple 'revival of atomism', but that the Renaissance confronts us with a diverse and conceptually messy process. Contributors are: Stephen Clucas, Christoph Luthy, Craig Martin, Elisabeth Moreau, William R. Newman, Elena Nicoli, Sandra Plastina, Kuni Sakamoto, Jole Shackelford, and Leen Spruit.

How were the relations among image, imagination and cognition characterized in the period 1500 - 1800? The authors of this volume argue that in those three centuries, a thoroughgoing transformation affected the following issues: (i) what it meant to understand phenomena in the natural world (cognition); (ii) how such phenomena were visualized or pictured (images, including novel types of diagrams, structural models, maps, etc.); and (iii) what role was attributed to the faculty of the imagination (psychology, creativity). The essays collected in this volume examine the new conceptions that were advanced and the novel ways of comprehending and expressing the relations among image, imagination, and cognition. They also shed light, from a variety of perspectives, on the elusive nexus of conceptions and practices.

The papers collected in this volume study the function and meaning of narrative texts from a variety of perspectives. The word "text" is used here in the broadest sense of the term: it denotes literary books, but also oral tales, speeches, newspaper articles and comics. One of the purposes of this volume is to discover what these different texts have in common. The texts are approached from four main perspectives: New Philology, Linguistics, Iconography and Reception studies. Contributors come from diverse disciplines, such as Classical Studies, Medieval Studies, English literature, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, Art History, Linguistics, and Communication and Information Studies, all united in a common purpose to understand the workings of narrative texts.

The well-illustrated articles in Observing the World through Images offer insights into the uses of images in astronomy, mathematics, instrument-making, medicine and alchemy, highlighting shared forms as well as those peculiar to individual disciplines. Themes addressed include: the processes of image production and communication; the transformation of images through copying and adaptation for new purposes; genres and traditions of imagery in particular scientific disciplines; the mnemonic and pedagogical value of diagrams; the relationship between text and image; and the roles of diagrams as tools to think with. Contributors include: Isabelle Pantin, Jennifer Rampling, Samuel Gessner, Renee Raphael, Karin Ekholm, Hester Higton, and Katie Taylor.

When David Gorlaeus, a prospective theology student, passed away tragically at twenty-one years old, he left behind two highly innovative manuscripts, which were published posthumously in 1620 and 1651, respectively. As his identity was unknown, seventeenth-century readers understood him both as an anti-Aristotelian thinker and a precursor of Descartes. In contrast, by the twentieth century, historians depicted him as an atomist, natural scientist, and even a chemist. "David Gorlaeus (1591-1612)" seeks to pull together what is known of this enigmatic figure. Combining multiple historical sources, Christoph Luthy provides a narrative of Gorlaeus's life that casts light on his exceptional body of work and places it firmly at the intersection between philosophy, the nascent natural sciences, and theology. "Christoph Luthy is the first to tell the complete story of David Gorlaeus and to reconstruct his image on the basis of all remaining sources. Showing in a convincing way that Gorlaeus is one of the key figures in the renewal of atomistic philosophy in the seventeenth century and a major influence on many philosophers that are much better known, he leaves us with the melancholy picture of someone who died too young to become one of the heroes of the scientific revolution."--Theo Verbeek, Utrecht University

Herbert Luthy (1918-2002), einer der bedeutendsten Schweizer Historiker und Essayisten des 20. Jahrhunderts, erlangte wegen seiner virtuosen Verknupfung von akademischer Geschichtsschreibung und Journalismus internationale Anerkennung. In der ab 2005 erschienenen siebenbandigen Werkausgabe sind seine wissenschaftlichen und essayistischen Arbeiten gesammelt und erneut zuganglich gemacht worden. Unbekannt geblieben ist jedoch seine satirische Schweizergeschichte, die er als fruhreifer Gymnasiast in den Jahren 1933-1935, der Zeit der anbrechenden "Geistigen Landesverteidigung", gezeichnet hat. Dieser witzige Jugendstreich wurde anonym 1962 als "Bilderhandschrift von Ennenda" fur einen kleinen Kreis Eingeweihter publiziert und ist langst vergriffen. In der jetzigen Ausgabe erscheint diese Chronik erstmals unter dem Namen des Autors. Der renommierte Zurcher Historiker Jakob Tanner geht in seinem Vorwort auf den geschichtlichen Platz und die erneute Relevanz dieser karikierten Schweizergeschichte ein. In einer biographischen Skizze ergrundet Christoph Luthy die Entstehungsgeschichte dieser Chronik im Spannungsfeld familiarer und geistiger Einflusse.