  One of the most intriguing aspects of Francesco Patrizi's heritage as a forebear of early modern science and philosophy is his ongoing attempt in his major works to incorporate a systematic account of the natural world within an overall methodological and metaphysical context, anticipating by doing so some of the defining characteristics of such thinkers as Galileo, Descartes and Leibniz. Perhaps nowhere is this more clearly displayed than in his later writings, especially the Pancosmia section of the Nova … Philosophia and in his discussion of mathematical and physical space (Brickman, tr. 1943; Vedrine, ed. 1996).