REN242H1: Scientific Worldviews of the Renaissance

An in-depth study of late medieval and early modern scientific worldviews, with a focus on interconnections between natural philosophy, cosmology, theology, astronomy, optics, medicine, natural history, and ethics. Through a consideration of early modern ideas including free will and determinism, the finite and infinite universe, teleology and mechanism, theism and deism, and deduction and intuition, this course investigates some of the period’s key metaphysical and methodological assumptions, and reveals how an evolving scientific understanding informed the Renaissance worldview.