Background
He was born in Cosenza on November 7, 1509 to a noble family.
(Excerpt from Bernardini Telesii De Rerum Natura, Vol. 1 ...)
Excerpt from Bernardini Telesii De Rerum Natura, Vol. 1 Potei comunicare al Congresso l'adesione entusiasta di Benedetto Croce e la proposta, che corrispondeva ad un voto già espresso dalla Società, ottenne da tutti i presenti la più cordiale approvazione, e, il Presidente Federigo Enriques si impegnò di dare ogni aiuto possibile debbo infatti alla autorevole intercessione di lui e di Benedetto Croce se Felice Tocco ha accettato di assumere la direzione della raccolta. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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philosopher scientist scholars
He was born in Cosenza on November 7, 1509 to a noble family.
His first training was obtained from his uncle, a capable scholar who taught him Greek as well as Latin.
After schooling elsewhere in Italy, he returned to Cosenza spend most of his life there.
He was educated at Milan by his uncle, Antonio, himself a scholar and a poet of eminence, and afterwards at Rome and Padua.
Resigning to his brother the archbishopric of Cosenza, offered to him by Pope Pius IV, he began to lecture at Naples and finally founded the academy of Cosenza.
Telesio was the head of the great South Italian movement which protested against the accepted authority of abstract reason, and sowed the seeds from which sprang the scientific methods of Campanella and Bruno, of Bacon and Descartes, with their widely divergent results. He, therefore, abandoned the purely intellectual sphere and proposed an inquiry into the data given by the senses, from which he held that all true knowledge really comes. Instead of postulating matter and form, he bases existence on matter and force. This force has two opposing elements: heat, which expands, and cold, which contracts. These two processes account for all the diverse forms and types of existence, while the mass on which the force operates remains the same. The harmony of the whole consists in this, that each separate thing develops in and for itself in accordance with its own nature while at the same time its motion benefits the rest. The obvious defects of this theory, (1) that the senses alone cannot apprehend matter itself, (2) that it is not clear how the multiplicity of phenomena could result from these two forces, and (3) that he adduced no evidence to substantiate the existence of these two forces, were pointed out at the time by his pupil, Patrizzi (see article on Patrizzi, Francesco). Moreover his theory of the cold earth at rest and the hot sun in motion was doomed to disproof at the hands of Copernicus. At the same time, the theory was sufficiently coherent to make a great impression on Italian thought. When Telesio went on to explain the relation of mind and matter, he was still more heterodox. Material forces are, by hypothesis, capable of feeling; matter also must have been from the first endowed with consciousness. For consciousness exists, and could not have been developed put of nothing. Again, the soul is influenced by material conditions; consequently the soul must have a material existence. He further held that all knowledge is sensation (“non ratione sed sensu”) and that intelligence is, therefore, an agglomeration of isolated data, given by the senses. He does not, however, succeed in explaining how the senses alone can perceive difference and identity. At the end of his scheme, probably in deference to theological prejudices, he added an element which was utterly alien, namely, a higher impulse, a soul superimposed by God, in virtue of which we strive beyond the world of sense. The whole system of Telesio shows lacunae in argument, and ignorance of essential facts, but at the same time it is a forerunner of all subsequent empiricism, scientific and philosophical, and marks clearly the period of transition from authority and reason to experiment and individual responsibility.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
(Excerpt from Bernardini Telesii De Rerum Natura, Vol. 1 ...)
(Rare book)
The whole system of Telesio shows lacunae in argument, and ignorance of essential facts, but at the same time it is a forerunner of all subsequent empiricism, scientific and philosophical, and marks clearly the period of transition from authority and reason to experiment and individual responsibility.