Cesare Cremonini (22 December 1550 in Cento in the then Papal States - 19 July 1631 in Padua) was an Italian philosopher and scientist. Considered one of the greatest philosophers of his time, he is now remembered as an infamous side actor of the Galileo affair, one of the two scholars who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Galileo used him as the main prototype for the character Simplicio in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
Overview
Cesare Cremonini teached philosophy for 30 years, first at the University of Ferrara, then from 1590 at the University of Padua where he was a colleague and rival of Galileo Galilei. He teached the doctrines of Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and especially Averroes. Having teached that reason alone cannot demonstrate the immortality of the soul, some accused him of materialism and atheism.
When Galileo claimed he had discovered mountains of the Moon, Cremonini was one of the scholars who sternly refused to even check through the telescope, because Aristotle had definitely demonstrated it impossible.
His main books are:
- Biatyposis naturalis Aristote Ecce philosophiœ
- De anima
- De Sensibus et facultate appetitiva
His students included English doctor William Harvey (who first correctly described the properties of blood being pumped around the body by the heart), and eminent Greek scholar Ioannis Kottounios (his successor to the chair of philosophy at Padua).
Sources
General:
- http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/c/cremonini.htm
- it:Cesare Cremonini (filosofo)
- fr:Cesare Cremonini (philosophe)
Galileo telescope incident:
- http://www.galilean-library.org/galileo1.html : Cesare Cremoni [sic, typo] and Giulio Libri, professors of philosophy at the universities of Padua and Pisa respectively, refused even to look through the telescope.
- http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0138.html : One frequent embellishment to the story is the claim that certain clergy refused to look through Galileo's telescope, because they thought it bewitched. Actually these were not churchmen at all but two of Galileo's scientific rivals, the scholastic natural philosophers Cesare Cremonini and Guilio Libri, who embraced the then popular view that telescopic observations were a superfluous amendment to the complete adequacy — or so they thought — of Aristotle's physical system.
- "Venetischer Aristotelismus im Ende der aristotelischen Welt: Aspekte der Welt und des Denkens des Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631)" : Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631) enjoys today the dubious distinction of having declined to look through Galileo's telescope because he already knew from Aristotle everything that could be known about the heavens. Galileo clearly had him in mind when drawing his portrait of Simplicio, the Aristotelian stalking horse in his two great dialogues. Yet at the time, Cremonini was considered one the greatest philosophers of the age, commanding a salary at the University of Padua double that offered to Galileo after his spectacular telescopic discoveries.
- http://www.angelfire.com/biz/Newman/section1.html (an account of the Galileo/Cremonini telescope incident)
Cesare Cremonini (philosopher) is also cited in [[1]] :
- Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (model for Simplicio)
- Galileo affair (telescope incident)
- William Harvey (famous student)
- Ioannis Kottounios (famous student)
it:Cesare Cremonini (filosofo) fi:Cesare Cremonini