The scientific knowledge of book XVI De subtilitate by G. Cardano used in the Trattato sulla divinatione naturale cosmologica by P.A. Foscarini

Abstract

Description: P.A. Foscarini’s Trattato sulla divinatione naturale cosmologica played an important role in the context of the vernacular works related to such topics as meteorology, mathematics and natural philosophy in the early modern Europe. In his treatise, Foscarini (1562/1565-1616) shows to some extent a debt towards Cardano’s De subtilitate (1550). Of Cardano’s masterpiece, Foscarini is mostly interested to the book XVI (On the Sciences). That section of Cardano’s work seems to play an important role in Foscarini’s development and planning of some parts of his Institutionum omnis generis doctrinarum… Syntaxis (1615). It provided a number of useful suggestions in order to improve and clarify Foscarini’s classification of the architecture of sciences.

Keywords

• literature
• 17th century literature
• italian literature
• history of literature
• antonio foscarini
• divination
• girolamo cardano
• mathematics
• science
• nistory of science