‘Utrum physiologia sit prima philosophia’: Metaphysics and science in Tommaso Campanella

This essay considers the philosophy of Tommaso Campanella by examining it in light of a metaphysics conceived from the relationship between history, science, and experience. The desire to reform scientific knowledge beyond Aristotelian boundaries, integrating history and experience as the foundations of science, leaves Campanella’s philosophy still steeped in the logical distinctions between natural science and metaphysics. After all, Campanella positioned the entire philosophy of nature as an intermediate knowledge capable of uniting logic and metaphysics. Nevertheless, his metaphysics breathes the cultural atmosphere of early modernity, which, while referencing the past, looks towards a future still uncertain, balancing between ancient concepts and new meanings that will eventually be attributed to the vocabulary of modern metaphysical language.