Giorgio Valla and the Theory of Perception Between Physiology and Natural Philosophy

Abstract

Giorgio Valla’s cultural activity as a humanist and physician plays a role of fundamental importance in understanding the developments that philosophy and the history of science went through in the second half of the 15th century. His collection of manuscripts and his vast work as a translator of medical treatises are not only a mere material re-appropriation of the philosophical and scientific culture of the Greek world that the Latin West had lost or known only in mediated form, but also the necessary premise for the construction of an organic system of knowledge. This system, inspired by deep Christian convictions, allowed Valla’s selection and organization of sources in the encyclopedic experiment of De expetendis et fugiendis rebus opus (Venice, 1501). Traces of this process of synthesis and rewriting can also be found in the section of Valla’s encyclopedia dedicated to the relationship between internal and external senses, specifically between imagination (namely, Valla’s translation of the technical term φαντασία/φανταστικόν) and sense-organs.