The Influence of Hermetic Literature on Petrić and Renaissance Philosophy of Nature

Abstract

The article deals with an epistemological question about the necessary conditions for the refutation of a general theory and the implementation of a new one. We take as an example Renaissance cosmology and the philosophy of Frane Petrić from Cres, Croatia. The Corpus hermeticum had an important role in the Renaissance. They were not scientific texts and were accepted by contemporary thinkers as speculative, extrinsical texts, nevertheless they influenced the new scientific revolution with the concepts and principles of harmony, symmetry and conformity in the works of Kopernik, Petrić, Bruno and Kepler. The article tries to show that argumentation in the interpretative fight for a new theory takes place in the fields of external or extrinsical factors, while new artifacts or even new physical facts are less influential.