In this article, I provide a historical and bibliographical exploration of the handwritten, dictated commentaries (dictata) of Johannes de Raey (1620/1622–1702) on the texts of René Descartes (1596–1650), shedding light on their structure, development, and on their relations with the academic commentaries of Johannes Clauberg (1622–1665) and Christoph Wittich (1625–1687). The study of these commentaries, which are extant as class notes, is important because they conveyed one of the first systematic teachings of Descartes’s ideas and constituted a vehicle for their (...) further dissemination across northern Europe. (shrink)

O propósito deste artigo é analisar a expressão que assegura a presença de partes da cosmologia de Empédocles no Ocidente latino nos séculos XII-XIII, qual seja, creatio mundi, esta que é a tradução do termo κοσμοποιία. A análise centra-se, por um lado, em três traduções latinas da Física II, 4, 196a 20-24, de Aristóteles, texto no qual aparece o termo κοσμοποιία e, por outro lado, em partes da obra de Tomás de Aquino na qual o autor discute a cosmologia de (...) Empédocles. Para tanto, o texto é composto de três partes. Na primeira apresento o problema suscitado pela tradução de κοσμοποιία como creatio mundi e como factura mundi respectivamente. Na segunda, por seu turno, exponho os termos que viabilizam uma certa visão de conjunto da cosmologia de Empédocles no século XIII. Enfim, na terceira parte, apresento brevemente o sentido da noção de mundo e sua possível configuração para Empédocles. (shrink)

With the increased acceptance of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) within society, new research reflects deeper folk health histories beyond formal medical spaces. The contested relationships between formal and informal medicine have deep provenance and as scientific medicine began to professionalise in the 19th century, lay health knowledges were simultaneously absorbed and disempowered (Porter 1997). In particular, the ‘medical gaze’ and the responses of informal medicine to this gaze were framed around themes of power, regulation, authenticity and narrative reputation. These (...) responses were emplaced and mobile; enacted within multiple settings by multiple agents and structures over time. The work is drawn from secondary material from Ireland, which identify more indigenous narratives of health and act as potential sources for medical humanities. While assumptions have been made as to the place of folk-medicine being essentially rural, evidence will be presented which shows a more complex network of health beliefs and practices. The narratives of informal practice and folk-medicine drawn from evidence from Ireland point to more fluid and hybrid relations with formal medicine and suggest that the complementary nature of the two models reflected wider cultural debates and models of belief (Del Casino Jnr., Health & Place 10:59-73, 2004). (shrink)

This thesis provides a new analysis of early contributions to the development of the theory of absolute time—the notion that time exists independently of the presence or actions of material bodies and has no material cause. Though popularly attributed to Newton, I argue that this conception of time first appeared in medieval philosophy, as a solution to a peculiar theological problem generated by a widespread misrepresentation of Aristotle. I trace the subsequent evolution of the theory of absolute time through to (...) the seventeenth-century, and argue that Newton, if anything, retreats from a full endorsement of the doctrine. (shrink)