Phase 1 : Seed 

    Le concept de semence dans les theories de la matiere a la Renaissance :  
   de Marsile Ficin a Pierre Gassendi.  
    (these de doctorat (nouveau regime) en Histoire des sciences) 
    direction de Robert Halleux et Bernard Joly, Universite Lille III, 
    le 18 decembre 1999.  431pp. 

Contents 

Introduction generale       10 

Premiere partie : Marsile Ficin et son cercle     15 

 　   Chapitre 1.  Le concept de semence avant Ficin    16 
      Chapitre 2.  Marsile Ficin     23 
      Chapitre 3.  Le cercle de Ficin       42 
      Chapitre 4.  Jean Fernel       62 
 
Deuxieme partie : La tradition aristotelicienne de la science minerale    78 

      Chapitre 1.  Georg Agricola     81 
      Chapitre 2.  Jereme Cardan     99 
      Chapitre 3.  Andre Cesalpin     116 

Troisieme partie : Paracelse et les Paracelsiens      131 
 
      Chapitre 1.  Paracelse       132 
      Chapitre 2.  Pierre Severin     162 
      Chapitre 3.  Joseph Du Chesne     201 
      Chapitre 4.  Oswald Croll     223 

Quatrieme partie : Les auteurs eclectiques de la science minerale   246 
 
      Chapitre 1.  Bernard Palissy     247 
      Chapitre 2.  Michel Sendivogius     263 
      Chapitre 3.  Anselme Boece de Boodt    282 
      Chapitre 4.  Excursus - Daniel Sennert     301 
      Chapitre 5.  Etienne de Clave     305 

Cinquieme partie : Van Helmont et Gassendi     327 

      Chapitre 1.  Jean-Baptiste Van Helmont    329 
      Chapitre 2.  Pierre Gassendi     349 

Conclusion generale       371 

Annexes         375 
Bibliographie        382 
 
 

    Title : The idea of spiritus for the formation of natural things in the Renaissance : 
           From Ficinian “Spiritus mundi” to chemical “Spiritus faber” 

Background, Object and Scope : 

     In my doctoral dissertation, I studied the concept of seed in the matter theory of the Renaissance. This concept, established under the authority of Platon, is a missing link which joins, for the formation of natural things, the Aristotelian doctrine of substantial form, widely diffused during the Middle Ages, and the mechanical theory of molecules, popular in the eighteenth century. Largely accepted by Neoplatonic humanists and Paracelsian medics, it played a particular role in the formation of western philosophy and science of the modern period. I showed that the genesis of this idea should be due to Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) of the Neoplatonic academy (Florence) and that this concept was considerably developed by the Danish Paracelsian Petrus Severinus (1542-1602) who systematized the contributions of Ficino, Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486-1535), Jean Fernel (1497-1558) and Paracelsus (1493-1541). Indeed, his theory became the primal source of the mystic Flemish alchemist J.-B. Van Helmont (1577-1644) and the French atomic philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) for the construction of their matter theories. 
　 
     In the course of that study, I realized that Ficino’s idea of seed was deeply connected to his theory of Spiritus mundi (World-Spirit), medium between the anima mundi (World-Soul) and the World-Body. For him, the Spiritus mundi was the vector of these invisible and divine seeds of natural things. Through the development of the doctrine of seed during the sixteenth century, the Ficinian idea of Spiritus mundi went through many changes to explain the generation and the ordering of natural things, on the basis of the Paracelsian concept of craftsman-like agent ‘Archeus’. Neoplatonic and Paracelsian natural philosophers used freely this idea of craftsman-like spirit to understand the formation, development and organization of natural things and the harmonization of their parts. So this concept was the important key to conceive a wide range of natural phenomena, from the genesis of minerals and insects to the movement of stars. Severinus transformed the concept of the “World-spirit” into that of the “Mechanical spirits” enclosed in the seeds of things. Afterwards, his theory was elaborated into that of “Archeus faber” by Van Helmont. I found that the Severinian idea was incorporated into the mechanical atomic philosophy of Gassendi as the “Spiritus elaborator” of molecules. 
　 
     Until now, the concept of spiritus has been studied especially in the context of Neoplatonic natural magic by such historians as D. P. Walker, F. A. Yates or W.-D. M?ller-Jahncke and in that of medicine by A.G. Debus, J. J. Bono, M. L. Bianchi, N. E. Emerton or A. Clericuzio. But the transformation process of the Ficinian idea into chemical concept (for Paracelsians) or into mechanical one (for Gassendi) was not yet studied systematically by historians. So I propose to analyze the process and the nature of this transformation. The main object of this study is to elucidate the continuity of Renaissance ideas by the case of Ficinian theory of “spiritus” which seem to have remained alive and important in the heart of the New philosophy of Gassendi. By this method I hope to demonstrate a neglected aspect of the so-called “scientific revolution” i.e. its historical root in the Renaissance philosophy. I will also try to clarify theoretical developments between the famous theory of “Archeus” of Paracelse and that of Van Helmont in the historical context. The result of this study can contribute to understand some backgrounds of the development of later theories such as “plastic nature”, “living matter” or “active principle” in the second half of the seventeenth century. 
 
     At this Wolfenbuettel stage (during the Summer Course on Learned medicine in the late Renaissance), I particularly hope to make researches on Tuebingen philosopher Jacob Schegkius’ (1511-1587) embryological thought, exposed mainly in his De plastica seminis facultate (1580), and its scholastic and humanistic backgrounds. (See the Plan of the research project, Pt 2, sec. 3 in the next page). By his idea of “plastic force in seeds”, (promoted also by Daniel Sennert in 1619), Renaissance theory of chemico-medical spiritus received another dimension to become explicitly “seminal”. This meeting of ideas gave birth ultimately the famous theory of “Plastic Nature” of Ralph Cudworth. 
 

Part 2 : Aristotelian Intervention 
     Here I will treat new ideas proposed by Scholastic academics against Cardano’s theory of the “Universal soul” exposed in his Neoplatonic orientated Aristotelian philosophy. The aim of this part is to show that their debates on Cardano’s theory and their interpretation of Aristotle’s psycho-embryological doctrine contributed indispensably to the later development of the concept of “Spiritus faber” by Paracelsian natural philosophers. 
 
     1.  Cardano’s idea of the “Universal soul” as a principle of Nature (1550) 
     2.  Julius-Caesar Scaliger’s refutation of Cardano’s “Universal soul” 
          and his theory of Soul as an “Architect” (1557) 
     3.  Jacob Schegkius of T?bingen’s theory of “Plastic force” in seeds (1580) 
     4.  Daniel Sennert’s recapitulation (1619) 

Part 3 : Paracelsian Way : From “Spiritus mundi” to “Spiritus faber”  
       In this part I will show the process of the transformation, from the theory of universal spirit to that of the “Spiritus faber”, craftsman-like spirit of Nature. This change was executed by Paracelsian natural philosophers who united Ficinian “Spiritus mundi” with Paracelsian “Archeus”, in forging new theories of the “Mechanical spirits” (spiritus mechanici). First of all, I will analyze the ideas of “Spirit of Nature” and “Archeus” in the works of Paracelsus. I will continue to demonstrate its drastic change by the Danish Paracelsian Petrus Severinus in his Idea medicinae philosophicae (Basel, 1571) and the reception of Severinus’ theory by his followers until its highly elaborated form of “Archeus faber” of Van Helmont. 
 
    1.  “Spirits” and “Archeus” in Paracelsus’ natural philosophy 
    2.  Severinus’ theory of “Mechanical spirits” in seeds 
    3.  “Chemical spirits” in the followers of Severinus : Thomas Moffett 
        (1584), Joseph Du Chesne (1604) and Oswald Croll (1609) 
    4.  “Architectonic spirits” of Anselmus Boetius de Boodt (1609) 
    5.  Jacques Nuysement’s Alchemical Tract on “Universal Spirit” (1621) 
    6.  “Spiritus faber” in Robert Fludd’s chemical theosophy 
    7.  J.-B. Van Helmont’s notion of “Archeus faber” 

Part 4 : “Spiritus faber” in New Philosophy 
      Here I will analyze several leading natural philosophers of the beginning of the 17th century to determine degrees of their commitment to the idea of craftsman-like spirits in Nature in such figures as Johannes Kepler, William Gilbert and Francis Bacon. Afterwards, I will demonstrate that Gassendi incorporated his theory of “Spiritus elaborator”, which was the organizing principle of molecules called “seeds”, in his mechanical and atomic natural philosophy. 
 
    1.  “Spirits faber” in Kepler, Gilbert and F. Bacon 
    2.  Mersenne’s rejection of natural magic and its impact on the theory of spirits 
    3.  Gassendi’s theory of “Spiritus elaborator” and its Renaissance roots 
 

    What determinds the specificity of natural things, living and non-living ? What is the factor which constructs their admirable organisations ? Modern biologists might answer that it’s the genetic codes, say DNA, and modern chemists might say that it’s the molecules. The idea of "molecule", the term invented by the seventeenth century French atomist Pierre Gassendi, then, became popular during the eighteenth century, while the idea of genetic code appeared only very lately. If we pose the same question to the Latin medieval thinkers, essentially Aristotelians, they might have answered that it’s the "form", or more precisely "substantial form" of being. 

    Of the historical point of view, the transition of the doctrine of the form to that of molecule didn’t happen directly. What existed between these two systems ? I do say that it’s the concept of "seed". That is true that, in the natural philosophical texts of the 16th and 17th centuries, wa can observe very frequently the use of the terms derived from the seed as vector of the information of the specificity and the organisation of natural things : seed, seed of forms, seminal reasons, seminal principles, and notably the Latin term "seminaria", which means the seedbed. 
 
    Among the period of the so-called "scientific revolution", Descartes speaks of the seed of sciences implanted in human soul. His contemporary, Gassendi have identified his molecule with seed. For the Flemish alchemist Van Helmont, the concept of seed was the cardinal point of his matter theory. 
 
    In the medical context, some 16th century doctors suggested the existence of invisible seeds which caused many new diseases which were unkown to the Ancients. This new etyological idea was formulated by Jean Fernel in Paris, by Giloramo Fracastoro in Verona, and the revolutionary switzerland doctor Theophrastus Paracelsus. These three men launched their idea of seed, almost the same time, but independently. 
 
    So several historians realised that the concept of seed played a very important role in the scientific revolution. Most remarkable among those was Walter Pagel. He found the idea of seed in Paracelsus and Van Helmont, and tried to fix upon the historical philosophical context. For him, the origin of these ideas is the Stoic doctrine of "logoi spermatikoi", also adapted by Saint Augustine as "seminal reasons" and Medieval alchemical idea of "seed of metals", especially that of precious metals, gold and silver. 

    Although some other minor historical studies was made by historians of science after Pagel, no one has realised a systematic study of this issue. Indeed, closely linked with Renaissance chemical philosophy, the concept of seed seems to me to have a significant influence although it was relatively ignored by many historians. So the aim of the phase I of my research is to realise a first systematic study of the concept of seed in the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century. 
 
    As you see in my resume, my thesis is divided in five parts. First of them is destinated to find the origin of the concept of seed in its Renaissance form. Comparing with the idea of seed, often occasionally implied in the Ancient and medieval philosophy and in the medieval Latin alchemy, I found that Marsilio Ficino of the Florentine Platonic Academy played a significant role. Uniting the Neoplatonic idea of seed accepted from the Stoics by Plotinus with the atomistic idea of seed of Lucretius, Ficino established the renaissance type of the concept of seed under the authority of Plato. For him, the Nature, placed between the World-Soul and his body, is plenty of invisible, spiritual and divine seeds. These seeds come from the "reasons" contained in the World-Soul, and generate the forms of natural beings in the informed matter. So the universal Nature is a great seedbed which embrace all the particular seeds of forms. 
 
    Among scholars near Ficino, gathered under the name of the "circle of Ficino", I examined the case of the direct acceptance in Agrippa of Nettesheim and that of shadowy one in Girolamo Fracastro. But, most distinguish figure at that sage, seems to me Jean Fernel. That is Fernel who established the ficinian concept of seed in the learned medical context. 

     In the second part, changing drastically the set, I examined the situation of the concept of seed in the tradition of the Aristotelian mineral science, using the examples of Agricola, Cardano and Cesalpino. Why the tradition of mineral science ? Because, most strange manifestation of the concept of seed is its implication to the mineral kingdom by way of that, we can see, in the Renaissance period, very curious ideas about mineral physiology and mineral psychology, under the great influence of Cardano. But, my analyse revealed that these peoples, whoever sustained or refuted Cardano’s mineralogy including Cardano himself, were primary dominated by the spirit of Albertus Magnus, giant of the medieval mineral science. So the idea of mineral seed was not popular in this tradition until the end of the 16th century. 
 
     The decisive role for the dissemination of the ficinian concept of seed was played by Paracelsian doctors. For Paracelsus, the combined unit of his famous three principles, Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, was a seed of being that determines the specificity of each natural thing. And the archetypical "verbe" of God, "Fiat", in the Creation story of the Genesis of the Bible is the first seed of all other particular seeds of beings. 
 
     Uniting the ideas of Paracelsus and Fernel, the Danish Paracelsian, Petrus Severinus, establish his philosophy of seed, using also some Hippocratic texts and sayings. His main work, Idea medicinae (Basel, 1571) became the landmark of the concept of seed and exercised enormous influences on later generations, including Francis Bacon, or much more later Leibniz. Among his direct disciples, Joseph Duchesne, also called Quercetanus, give much stress on the chemical aspect to the concept of seed and Oswald Croll, theological dimension. (I suspect that the young Descartes knew and used the theological concept of seed of Croll.) 

     The forth part is a kind of show-case of the gradual diffusion of the idea into the mineral science of the last quarter of the sixteenth century and in the first half of the seventeenth century. We can not classify these writers neither Platonist, Aristotelians nor Paracelsians. But they developed the concept of seed in mineral science, to the level that in the 17th century, the theory of mineral seed became the most standard for serious thinkers. 

     Through the writing of these rather minor authors, the Renaissance concept of seed played the important role for the construction of new matter theory in the scientific revolution. To show this, I conceived especially the fifth part which tries to compare of the two types of perfection of the concept. One is chemical perspective, represented, by Van Helmont, the other is corpuscular one, exposed by Gassendi. Until now, most of the historians consider that these two giants of the scientific revolution belonged to totally different intellectual enviroments. Van Helmont is viewed as a rather archaic, even bizare, alchemist while the French atomist is one the heros of the new rational mechanical philosophy. In spite of the radically different appearances of their works, these two men have implicated the idea of seed in their matter theory. By the textual analysis of their works, I could identify their sublime source text with the Idea medicinae of Danish Paracelsian, Petrus Severinus. They used the same material and same way of thinking to arrive at totally different type of matter theory. And that’s why, for example, the most important chemist of the 17th century, Robert Boyle, accepted the idea of seminal principle developed by Van Helmont in applying to his corpuscular philosophy, which he inherited much from Gassendi. 
 
     So, the history of the concept of seed is very important mainly by two reason, 

     1) To replace the hylomorphic theory of Scholastics, matter and form, new theoreticians of the 16th and 17th centuries used the concept of seed of Nature, which is the origin of forms of natural beings, with infinite variety but always very well organised. This concept, which was in origin purely metaphysical in the Neoplatonic philosophy of Marsilio Ficino to explain the generation of natural things. Agrippa’s acceptance helped much for its diffusion in Neoplatonic oriented humanist milieu, and whence Fernel applied it greatly into the divine foundation of his natural philosophy and medicine. Danish Paracelsian’s Idea medicinae was the most influential text for the diffusion of the concept, so influential that it contributed much to made forgotten the original development of Ficino or its application to the medical context effected by Fernel. 

     2) Secondly, after Gassendi, biologists of the second half of the 17th century developed, from his idea, the famous pre-formationist theory of the embryology. It must be mentioned that it’s in this historical context that great German philosopher G. W. Leibniz later developed his philosophy of monads and of "flos substantiae", sublte kernel of being. 

     So, it worthes to be mention that, in 1959, in his famous History of Embryology, Joseph Needham said that : "The devious connections between Greek atomism and seventeenth-century biological preformationism are now fairly clear… But otherwise excellent histories of atomism, such as that of Gregory, often jump direct from Epicurus to Gassendi, entirely neglecting the Stoic-Kabbalistic ‘seeds’."  Indeed, by this term "stoic-kabbalistic seeds", he intended to signify, not only mystic jewish philosophy but also the Neoplatonic oriented ideas of Paracelsus, Van Helmont and Leibniz. And Needham’s source of this idea was the studies of his college, Walter Pagel. 

     And the end of the 16th century, Giordano Bruno said : "The universal mind is the faculty or the powerful part of the World-Soul. It is this which, being one and only, fills up all and illuminate the Universe and guide the Nature... The Magi say that it is "very prolific with seeds" or again that it is the "sower" because it is this which impregnate the matter with all the forms and which, by the nature or the way of being of forms, come to figure, to form and to weave the matter, according to so admirable modes of organisation that we can not attribute it to the chance nor any other principle... Plotinus said that it is the "father and genitor" because it is this which distribute seeds in the fields of Nature and because it is the closest governor of the forms." (in On the Cause, the Principle and the One.)