Aristotle as a Cuttlefish: the Origin and Development of a Renaissance Image

Abstract

The anti-Aristotelian movement which grew from the humanist critique of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and culminated in the new philosophical and scientific outlook of the seventeenth century based many of its objections to the Stagirite on sound philosophical and scientific principles. It brought with it, however, also much rhetorical bombast which was meant to cast aspersions on Aristotle's doctrine. We read time and again, in the writings of Valla, Agricola, or Ramus on logic or of Bruno, Patrizi, or Bacon on natural philosophy, critical judgments of Aristotle and of the Aristotelians which are not so much soundphilosophy and science as clever oratory. To attempt to separate the two strands of the critique would be by no means an easy task, though it may well be worth while and interesting. Let me hasten to add that I do not intend to do so here.