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Towards the Authority of Vesalius
The authority of Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) in reviving human anatomy is without any doubt a landmark in the history of science. Yet his breakthrough was inconceivable without his predecessor's works. Moreover, later on, his own legacy would not remain untouched or undisputed. The question of scientific authority is not new; however it has hardly been tackled in a multidisciplinary and diachronic way. This volume brings together contributions from international scholars working in the field of theology, art history, philosophy, history of science and historical linguistics. Its goal is to contextualize and analyse the complex interaction between dogma and authority on the one hand and empirical progress on the other, both in the development of anatomy and the views on the human body, mainly before Vesalius's time. Indeed, it is not the volume's aim to focus exclusively on the role...