Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in Sixteenth-Century Bologna*

This paper focuses on the developments experienced by natural philosophy and mathematics in Bologna during a period of rapid change in the relationship of the various disciplines in the faculty of Arts and Medicine. Insisting that university science was characterized by a greater vitality than the traditional historiography usually concedes, this examination first offers some comments about the place of natural philosophy in the Italian universities, then discusses more specifically the University of Bologna. Changes that took place in the funding of natural philosophy, in the designation of astronomy and mathematics, and in the cycle of books read for natural science are all examined in turn and are complemented by a series of tables.