As a physician, natural philosopher, alchemist, magus, astronomer, astrologer, lay theologian, religious philosopher, and social thinker, Paracelsus influenced the thinking of sixteenth-century intellectuals in significant ways. His concept of magic as a universal system of scientific and theoretical inquiry into the relationship of God, nature, and humanity had a profound impact on the way the European scientific and religious communities would think about the cosmos and humanity's place in it. His insistence on lecturing and writing in German--a gesture of defiance against the university establishment--was a forecast of the ultimate fate of Latin as the universal scholarly language. His vast learning, his extended wanderings across Europe, and his ability to think synchretistically enabled him to blend his critical analysis of the revered authorities of antiquity and the Middle Ages with the knowledge of contemporary scholars, as well as of common folk. The result was a cosmology that was...