Du Châtelet and Descartes on the Roles of Hypothesis and Metaphysics in Natural Philosophy

Thomas Reid often seems distant from other Scottish Enlightenment figures. While Hume, Hutcheson, Kames, and Smith wrestled with the nature of social progress, Reid was busy with natural philosophy and epistemology, stubbornly loyal to traditional religion and ethics, and out of touch with the heart of his own intellectual world. Or was he? I contend that Reid not only engaged the Scottish Enlightenment's concern for improvement, but, as a leading interpreter of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, he also developed a scheme to explain the progress of human knowledge. Pulling thoughts from across Reid's corpus, I identify four key features that Reid uses to distinguish mature sciences from prescientific arts and inquiries. Then, I compare and contrast this scheme with that of Thomas Kuhn in order to highlight the plausibility and originality of Reid's work.

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The Reception of Descartes in the Seventeenth-Century Scottish Universities: Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy (1650–1680)

Journal of Scottish Philosophy ◽

10.3366/jsp.2015.0103 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 179-201 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Giovanni Gellera

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Natural Philosophy

In 1685, during the heyday of Scottish Cartesianism (1670–90), regent Robert Lidderdale from Edinburgh University declared Cartesianism the best philosophy in support of the Reformed faith. It is commonplace that Descartes was ostracised by the Reformed, and his role in pre-Enlightenment Scottish philosophy is not yet fully acknowledged. This paper offers an introduction to Scottish Cartesianism, and argues that the philosophers of the Scottish universities warmed up to Cartesianism because they saw it as a newer, better version of their own traditional Reformed scholasticism, chiefly in metaphysics and natural philosophy.

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