Telesio Bernardino (1509–88), Italian philosopher whose early scientific empiricism influenced Francis Bacon and Galileo. He studied in Padua, where he completed his doctorate in 1535, and practiced philosophy in Naples and Cosenza without holding any academic position. His major work, the nine volumes of De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (‘On the Nature of Things According to Their Principles,’ 1586), contains an attempt to interpret nature on the basis of its own principles, which Telesio identifies with the two incorporeal active forces of heat and cold, and the corporeal and passive physical substratum. As the two active forces permeate all of nature and are endowed with sensation, Telesio argues that all of nature possesses some degree of sensation. Human beings share with animals a material substance produced by heat and coming into existence with the body, called spirit. They are also given a mind by God. Telesio knew both the Averroistic and the Alexandrist interpretations of Aristotle. However, he broke with both, criticizing Aristotle’s Physics and claiming that nature is investigated better by the senses than by the intellect. P.Gar.