Reading Books in Natural Philosophy: How Conrad Gessner's Commentary on 'De Anima' (1563) was Annotated and Interpreted

Citation:

Goeing, Anja-Silvia. “Reading Books in Natural Philosophy: How Conrad Gessner's Commentary on 'De Anima' (1563) was Annotated and Interpreted.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 93, no. 2 (2017): 69–89.

Abstract:

Conrad Gessner (1516–65) was town physician and lecturer at the Zwinglian reformed lectorium in Zurich. His approach towards the world and mankind was centred on his preoccupation with the human soul, an object of study that had challenged classical writers such as Aristotle and Galen, and which remained as important in post-Reformation debate. Writing commentaries on Aristotle's De Anima (On the Soul) was part of early-modern natural philosophy education at university and formed the preparatory step for studying medicine. This article uses the case study of Gessner's commentary on De Anima (1563) to explore how Gessner's readers prioritised De Anima's information. Gessner's intention was to provide the students of philosophy and medicine with the most current and comprehensive thinking. His readers' responses raise questions about evolving discussions in natural philosophy and medicine that concerned the foundations of preventive healthcare on the one hand, and of anatomically specified patho- logical medicine on the other, and Gessner's part in helping these develop.

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Recent Publications

Goeing, Anja-Silvia. “Daniel Sennert’s Dissertations and the Furthering of Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century Medicine.” History of Universities 36, no. 1 (2023): 99-141. Publisher's Version Abstract

Goeing Sennert 2023

This chapter references Daniel Sennert’s dissertations to examine the development of new medical knowledge. It also covers new ways of assimilating and transmitting information in early modern Europe. Dissertations have only recently become a subject for investigation and are now treated as documents that help reveal learning practices in universities. The chapter explains how early modern medical science thrived on the lively exchange of information and materials among centres of European universities and academies. Overlooked developments in the organization and spread of medical knowledge of the early modern period is connected to the influence of university teaching and research on the (new) forms of knowledge. Dissertations are an important link in the chain of knowledge beyond the academy, and students’ undetermined part in the transmission of information.

Goeing, Anja-Silvia. “Conrad Gessner in Verse: Renaissance Natural History and the Swiss Reformation.” jhiblog.org (2022). Publisher's Version Abstract

Although routinely neglected by scholars, ephemeral poetry can teach us much about social networks and networks of knowledge in the early modern period. Sixteenth-century religious reform and the proliferation of scholarship through the new means of the printing press fostered many sorts of communication between scholars from different fields of knowledge. Here, ephemeral literature in particular reveals otherwise unknown connections between religious reform and the development of general knowledge in the sciences. Such was the case with the obituary poem written by the Genevan reformer Theodore Beza (1519–1605) about his former colleague, the physician and polymath Conrad Gessner (1516–1565). As a close study of this poem illustrates, the text is entangled in a complex network of exchange that revolved around the middlemen who helped memorialize Gessner and proved both cross-confessional and stretched across multiple disciplines of knowledge.

Blair, Ann, and Anja-Silvia Goeing. “Manuscripts as Pedagogical Tools in the Philosophy Teaching of Jean-Robert Chouet (1642-1731).” In Teaching Philosophy in Early Modern Europe. Text and Image, ed. by Susanna Berger and Daniel Garber (Archimedes, vol. 61), 165-203. Cham (Switzerland): Springer Nature, 2022. Publisher's Version Abstract

blair-goeing_2022.pdf

This chapter analyzes how the physics courses of Jean-Robert Chouet
(1642–1731) changed across the twenty years of his career as a professor of philosophy,
first at the Academy of Saumur (starting in 1664) then at the Academy of
Geneva (1669–86). We compare eight surviving student manuscripts, noting much
continuity but also some changes in organization, presentation, and content (in particular
a greater attention to the topics of place and extension important to
Cartesianism). Teaching by dictating a coursebook to students allowed the professor
to adjust his course at every iteration. The students also exercised individual choice
in the format, layout, and trappings of their manuscript coursebook, which could
include an alphabetical index or decorative elements. The most famous of Chouet’s
students whose coursebooks survive is Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (1664–1753), who
was later a friend of Newton’s. He studied philosophy with Chouet in 1678–80 and
his coursebook, which unfortunately does not include the section on physics, is
exceptionally beautifully kept and illustrated.

Keywords Student manuscripts · Physics courses · Academy of Geneva ·
Academy of Saumur · Jean-Robert Chouet · Nicolas Fatio de Duillier

Goeing, Anja-Silvia. “Chapter 12: The Genevan Academy: Scrutinizing European Connections in the Time of Theodore Beza.” In Jon Balserak, ed.: A Companion to the Reformation in Geneva, 277-299. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Publisher's Version

goeing-genevanacademy-acceptedversion-2021.pdf

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