Complex sentence: Cesi and his friends aimed to understand all of the natural sciences, an emphasis that set the "Lincei" apart from the host of 16th and 17th century Italian Academies, most of which were literary and antiquarian.
Split into simpler sentences: Cesi and his friends aimed to understand all of the natural sciences. This emphasis that set the "Lincei" apart from the host of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Italian Academies that were mostly literary and antiquarian.