The study of botany has traditionally been ancillary to medical knowledge. Yet, several issues arise while an autonomous discipline of plants develop in the early modern time. This volume aims to discuss a few of these aspects of the relationship between the study of plants and medicine in the early modern time (from the late 15th century to the 18th century). Dealing with the methodologies of transmitting botanical knowledge, the practices with plants, and the attempts to reinforce or rebuke medical traditions, the contributions to this volume focus on the material study of plants in the period of the scientific revolution. The authors focus on the study of herbaria, on manuscripts and materia medica, on the reception of ancient texts, such as Dioscorides' or Pliny's natural history, on the trajectories of exotic plants and the attempts to accommodate them within Galenic system, on the experimentation with plants in anatomical medicine or in the development of new pharmacology. The volume, intented for scholars in early modern history of science, medicine, botany, and also intellectual and material history, will be an important addition in the scholarship.

The volume analyzes the natural philosophical accounts and debates concerning the vegetative powers, namely nutrition, growth, and reproduction. While principally focusing on the early modern approaches to the lower functions of the soul, readers will discover the roots of these approaches back to the Ancient times, as the volume highlights the role of three strands that help shape the study of life in the Medieval and early modern natural philosophies. From late antiquity to the early modern period, the vegetative soul and its cognate concepts have played a substantial role in specifying life, living functions, and living bodies, sometimes blurring the line between living and non-living nature, and, at other moments, resulting in a strong restriction of life to a mechanical system of operations and powers. Unearthing the history of the vegetative soul as a shrub of interconnected concepts, the 24 contributions of the volume fill a crucial gap in scholarship, ultimately outlining the importance of vegetal processes of incessant proliferation, generation, and organic growth as the roots of life in natural philosophical interpretations.

The volume analyzes the natural philosophical accounts and debates concerning the vegetative powers, namely nutrition, growth, and reproduction. While principally focusing on the early modern approaches to the lower functions of the soul, readers will discover the roots of these approaches back to the Ancient times, as the volume highlights the role of three strands that help shape the study of life in the Medieval and early modern natural philosophies. From late antiquity to the early modern period, the vegetative soul and its cognate concepts have played a substantial role in specifying life, living functions, and living bodies, sometimes blurring the line between living and non-living nature, and, at other moments, resulting in a strong restriction of life to a mechanical system of operations and powers. Unearthing the history of the vegetative soul as a shrub of interconnected concepts, the 24 contributions of the volume fill a crucial gap in scholarship, ultimately outlining the importance of vegetal processes of incessant proliferation, generation, and organic growth as the roots of life in natural philosophical interpretations.

Shedding new light on the understudied Italian Renaissance scholar, Andrea Cesalpino, and the diverse fields he wrote on, this volume covers the multiple traditions that characterize his complex natural philosophy and medical theories, taking in epistemology, demonology, mineralogy, and botany. By moving beyond the established influence of Aristotle’s texts on his work, Andrea Cesalpino and Renaissance Aristotelianism reflects the rich influences of Platonism, alchemy, Galenism, and Hippocratic ideas. Cesalpino’s relation to the new sciences of the 16th century are traced through his direct influences, on cosmology, botany, and medicine. In combining Cesalpino’s reception of these traditions alongside his connections to early modern science, this book provides a vital case study of Renaissance Aristotelianism.