Work · Renaissance & Humanism
On the Nature of Things according to Their Own Principles
Explains nature without Aristotle’s forms, from heat, cold and matter perceived by the senses; first published in two books in 1565 and expanded to nine in 1586.
Introduction
Telesio published the first version in Rome in 1565 as “De natura iuxta propria principia”, in two books; a revised edition followed in Naples in 1570 and the final version in nine books in 1586. Against Aristotle, whose physics he regarded as a construction of reason, he proposes to explain nature from what the senses show. Two active, incorporeal principles – heat, coming from the sun, and cold, from the earth – contend for a passive bodily mass, and from their struggle all natural things arise. Every being strives to preserve itself; living beings perceive through a fine, warm spirit, to which in humans a soul created by God is added. Aristotelian critics attacked the book, and after Telesio’s death it was placed on the Index in 1596. Campanella defended it, and Bacon praised its turn to nature but saw in its principles a revival of Parmenides.
Connections
Criticizes
- Physicsc. 350 BCE · Aristotle
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