Natural Knowledge and Aristotelianism at Early Modern Protestant Universities. Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Volkhard Wels, eds. Episteme in Bewegung 14. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019. 342 pp. €72

To that effect, the authors of this volume provide a multitude of case studies showing how—under the theological and epistemological authority of Philipp Melanchthon—Protestant universities, from the Renaissance to the early Enlightenment, transformed traditional knowledge by reconciling Aristotelian concepts with Copernican cosmology, Ramism, Neoplatonism, and Cartesianism. Focused mainly on German scholars and their European knowledge networks, the thirteen articles of this collection range from analysis of Melanchthon's theologically informed and anthropocentric natural philosophy and its influence on medicine, mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy (a key chapter by Pietro Omodeo and Jonathan Régier) to the reception of heliocentrism and the debate about the nature of comets (Stefano Gulizia, Anna Jerratsch, Miguel Ángel Grenada). Bruce Moran showcases Libavius's efforts to define chemistry on the basis of the technical skills it requires and its epistemological character as an art, while Elisabeth Moreau vividly presents the alchemist's defense of medicine against Paracelsian ideas.