"Cosmopoiesis means 'world-making,' and in this book, Professor Mazzotta traces how major medieval and Renaissance thinkers invented their worlds through utopias, magic, science, art, and theatre. The Renaissance is usually read from a Cartesian or Hegelian (via Burckhardt) perspective. It is viewed as a time of individualities or it is studied in terms of disembodied ideas and abstract forms. Mazzotta calls for a new approach: the necessity to study the Renaissance in terms of the ongoing conversation of the arts and sciences."--BOOK JACKET.