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Submitted by domino1284 on February 28, 2008
Category: Religion
Words: 2975 | Pages: 12
Views: 96
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Born in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, in the late fifteenth century, Paracelsus Theophrastus, otherwise known as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, grew to become a renowned and controversial physician. A true renaissance man and a prolific author, Paracelsus wrote hundreds of treatises on topics as diverse as medicine, chemistry, astrology, natural philosophy, alchemy, occultism and theology. Although recognized as a reformer of sixteenth-century medicine and an early contributor to modern scientific chemistry, it is Paracelsus the alchemist and hermetic philosopher with whom I am concerned for this paper. Much of the scholarship and historiography of Paracelsus, however, remains questionable despite its success in bringing to light this obscure renaissance luminary. Historians, both past and present, have often portrayed him more as a mythologized figure than as a historical personage. The subjective views of his earliest records, written by either his adversaries or his most intimate disciples, blur the line between the mythology and history of the man Paracelsus, and sets the precedent for inaccuracy in later scholarship. The result has been a shadowy and shape-shifting Paracelsus.
Paracelsus gained contradictory reputations for writing extensively on both “empirical” and “speculative” subjects. He was recognized by some as a scientific genius for his academic contribution in the fields of medicine and chemistry, and by others as an illumined sage whose impact lay more in the sphere of philosophy and mysticism. More modern scholars tend to see to him as a superstitious and medieval man – although his contemporaries used the phrase “fatuous quack” to describe him more than once – due to his tendency of blurring the fields of empirical science and speculative philosophy. Such a fusion of disciplines, which in the renaissance mind were hardly separate, makes it more difficult for modern day historians to understand where, specifically,...
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