AUTHORS: Achillini, Alessandro Agricola, Georgius Alberti, Leone Battista Archimedes Aristotle Babington, John Baif, Lazare de Baldi, Bernardino Baliani, Giovanni Battista Barocius, Franciscus Benedetti, Giovanni Battista Berga, Antonio Biancani, Giuseppe Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso Borro, Girolamo Boyle, Robert Branca, Giovanni Buonamici, Francesco Buteo, Johannes Cardano, Girolamo Casati, Paolo Castelli, Benedetto Cataneo, Girolamo Ceredi, Giuseppe Ceva, Giovanni Cicero, M. Tullius Commandino, Federico Delfino, Federico Descartes, Rene Epicurus Euclid Fabri, Honore Foscarini, Paolo Antonio Galilei, Galileo Gassendi, Pierre Ghetaldi, Marino Giphanius, Hubert Guevara, Giovanni di Heron Alexandrinus Heytesbury, William Hutton, Charles Jordanus de Nemore Landi, Bassiano Lorini, Buonaiuto Lucretius Manuzio, Paolo Marci of Kronland, Johannes Marcus Mellini, Domenico Mersenne, Marin Monantheuil, Henri de Monte, Guidobaldo del Morelli, Gregorio Newton, Isaac Pacioli, Luca Pappus Alexandrinus Salusbury, Thomas Santbech, Daniel Schott, Gaspar Schreck, Johann Terrenz Stelliola, Niccolò Antonio Stevin, Simon Tartaglia, Niccolò Thomaz, Alvaro Thucydides Torricelli, Evangelista Valerio, Luca Varro, Michel Vitruvius Pollio Wolff, Christian von |
Berga, Antonio born 1535 in Turin, died between 1580 and 1582 in Piermont, Italian physician and philosopher At the age of 16 Antonio Berga began studying medicine and the arts in Padua, where he was especially influenced by his philosopher instructor Marc Antonio Genua, an Averroist. On 20 April, 1555 he took his medical examination with his medicine instructor Oddo Oddi and his philosophical examination with his philosophy instructor. When the university in Turin reopened in 1555, Antonio Berga was appointed to professorship for philosophy and medicine. In 1560 Prince Emanuele Filiberto founded a new university in Mondovi, and Antonio Berga received a chair for philosophy and medicine at this university. From this time on he belonged to Emanuele Filiberto’s inner circle. Antonio Berga appears to have had many enemies there. He published his first book, Paraphrasis eorum quae in quarto libro operis Meteorici habentur in Mondovi in 1565, in which he comments on the fourth book of Aristotle’s Meteorologia. In the same year his Natales Praelectiones was published, in which he comments on the introduction to Aristotle’s work De physica auscultatione from the Averroist perspective; at the end of this book Berga includes a short autobiography. The previously unpublished work Disputatione de intellectus humani immortalitate, by his teacher Marc Antonio Genua also appeared at this time. In 1566 Berga returned to Turin, where he was appointed as professor for theoretical medicine on 1 October, 1567. Thanks to the influence Giovanni Battista Benedetti exerted on Emanuele Filiberto, Antonio Berga also received the professorship for philosophy in Turin in 1569. In 1568 he published two of his own tracts on a single work by Aristotle: Paraphrasis disputationumque selectarum libri quatour in Libros Arixtotelis de ortu et interitu, followed by Disputationum selectarum libri duo in Libros Aristotelis de ortu et interitu. In these two works he again comments on Aristotle from an Averroist perspective. When Berga published his Averroist theses on the unity of spirit in 1572, he became involved in a public philosophical dispute with his colleague and friend Antonio Bucci, which concerned the interpretation of Aristotle’s work De anima in particular. In 1572 Bucci published his Naturales disputationes sex, of which the first, De phantasmate ad ant. Bergam, objects to Berga’s views. Berga responded in 1573 with his Averroist tract In proemium Phy. Arist. Commentarius itidem responsum ad logicam Augustini Bucii de Phantasmate Dispu. una cum Dispu. de primo cognito. At the instigation of Prince Emanuele Filiberto, a public debate was held in 1578 at the university on the subject of whether there was more water or more land on the earth. Another participant in this debate was Giovanni Battista Benedetti, who based his opinion that there was more land than water on the theories of Alessandro Piccolomini. In 1579 Berga published his opposing opinion in the tract Discorso ... della grandezza dell’acqua e delle terra contra l’opinione del Sig. Alessandro Piccolomini, to which Benedetti responded in the same year with his own tract Considerazione ... intorno al discorso della grandezza della terra e dell’acqua dell’Eccellent. Sig. Antonio Berga. The exact date of Antonio Berga’s death is not known; what is certain is that he is not mentioned in university records after 1580 and was registered as deceased in 1582.
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