Paracelsus : speculative theory and the crisis of the early Reformation / Andrew Weeks.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-231) and index.

--1. The ambiguities of Paracelsus. --2. Plague and salvation. --3. Peasant war and Iconoclasm. --4. The liberation of the divine image. --5. The voyage of medicine. --6. The world as mirror. --7. The illumination of theory. --Conclusion.

'Paracelsus is regarded as one of teh great medical innovators of all time, as a prototype of Goethe's Faust an as a founder of German Renaissance nature philosophy. Recently, his role in teh popular "radical Reformation" that coincided with but went beyond Luther's church reform has been recognized as well. A legendary wanderer and rebel, he is an author of undisputed importance, but also one clouded by puzzling ambiguities. Based on a close examination and revised dating of Paracelsus's writings, this book rejects certain myths concerning the author's scientific orientation and experience of nature. The genesis of his thought is traced to his response to sectarian conflicts of the early Reformation. One can characterize Paracelsus's project as taht of a radical theorist who transgressed the boundaries of disciplines and seized upon the irreducible particularities of his phenomena--the transmuted disease of the unrecognized female pathology--to challenge the established order and ideology.'

Paperback