Godly Men and Mechanical Philosophers: Souls and Spirits in Restoration Natural Philosophy

1987 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Schaffer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
The World ◽  
Work World ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The ArgumentRecent historiography of the Scientific Revolution has challenged the assumption that the achievements of seventeenth-century natural philosophy can easily be described as the ‘mechanization of the world-picture.’ That assumption licensed a story which took mechanization as self-evidently progressive and so in no need of further historical analysis. The clock-work world was triumphant and inevitably so. However, a close examination of one key group of natural philosophers working in England during the 1670s shows that their program necessarily incorporated souls and spirits, attractions and congruities, within both their ontology and their epistemology. Any natural philosophical strategy which excluded spirits and sympathies from its world was condemned as tending to subversion and irreligion. This examination shows that the term ‘mechanical philosophy’ was a category given its meanings within local contexts and carries no universal sense separate from that accomplished by these natural philosophers. It also shows how the experimental praxis was compelled to treat souls and spirits, to produce them through experimental labor, and then to extend these experimentally developed entities throughout the cosmos, both social and natural. The development of mechanical philosophy cannot be used to explain the cognitive and social structure of this program, nor its success: instead, the historical setting of experimental work shows how a philosophy of matter and spirit was deliberately constructed by the end of the seventeenth century.

scholarly journals Recent Works in Jesuit Philosophy

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Schloesser
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The works considered in this review essay trace the vicissitudes of Jesuit particularism and reflect broader changes in intellectual and cultural history over the past twenty years. Reevaluations of “scientific revolution,” “Enlightenment(s),” and “modernity” itself have provided the preconditions for the possible reframing of Jesuit “philosophical” practices (including “natural philosophy”). Five of these books treat the work of Francisco Suárez in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, a test-case for the problem of periodizing the “modern.” Three other works provide snapshots over the next 150 years: (1) seventeenth-century German-speaking Jesuit natural philosophers embracing experimental science; (2) a late-seventeenth-century superior general of the Society who embraced rigorism to a degree considered unacceptable by other Jesuits; and (3) in the early-eighteenth century, French Jesuit syntheses accommodating “Enlightenment” thought. Taken as a whole, these works demonstrate that, as binary oppositions between “Jesuits” and “moderns” continue to dissolve, Jesuit practices (sometimes in contrast to theories or principles) increasingly appear as accommodating, syncretizing, and hybridizing.

Divine Machines

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Living World ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Generation Theory

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. This book offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. The book shows how these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines. Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, the book takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here it reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. The book casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era.

Boyle, Robert (1627–91)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rose-Mary Sargent
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
The World ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Advance Knowledge

Boyle is often remembered for the contributions that he made to the sciences of chemistry and pneumatics. Like other natural philosophers in seventeenth-century England, however, he was a synthetic thinker who sought to advance knowledge in all areas of human concern. An early advocate of experimental methods, he argued that experimentation would not only reveal the hidden processes operative in the world but would also advance the cause of religion. Through the study of nature, experimentalists would come to understand that the intricacy of design manifest in the world must be the result of an omniscient and omnipotent creator. Boyle’s experimental investigations and theological beliefs led him to a conception of the world as a ’cosmic mechanism’ comprised of a harmonious set of interrelated processes. He agreed with the leading mechanical philosophers of his day that the corpuscular hypothesis, which explains the causal powers of bodies by reference to the motions of the least parts (corpuscles) of matter, provided the best means for understanding nature. He insisted, however, that these motions and powers could not be known by reasoning alone, but would have to be discovered experimentally.

Political Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-133
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gulliver's Travels ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Late seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the conjunction of politics and science at the core of Francis Bacon’s experimental project. Thomas Sprat’s The History of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels use the conventions of literary knowledge to express their scientific-political visions, insisting that natural philosophy cannot be understood apart from the political institutions enabling and enabled by its practice and promulgation. These writers use the experimental imagination to envisage, in turn, civil government, absolutist monarchy, and imperialism. Sprat advances scientific triumphalism and a model for schooling gentlemen into civil society.

Early Modern Theology and Science

2014 ◽  
pp. 607-624
Author(s):  
John Henry
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
Natural Philosophers

This chapter surveys prominent aspects of historical relations between theology and science in the early modern period. It argues that the medieval “handmaiden tradition,” in which natural philosophy was seen as a support to theology, continued throughout the period but with apologetic complications caused by the fragmentation of religious authority, and the proliferation of alternative new philosophies. It considers the mechanical philosophy and the concomitant concept of laws of nature, and their impact on mind-body dualism, and the development of natural theology. It also considers the role of natural philosophy in the rise of atheism, arguing that it did not create atheists, but was appropriated by them. Devout natural philosophers played into the hands of atheists by arguing among themselves as to the best way to combat atheism, and by taking a naturalistic line in their arguments, relegating God to the role of a remote primary cause and increasingly denying Providence. Finally, it considers persistent suggestions that Protestantism played a greater role in the promotion of the natural sciences than Catholicism. We consider here claims about millennialism as a stimulus to science; the effect of Protestant attitudes to the Bible and how it should be read,; and the role of Augustinian post-lapsarian anthropology.

scholarly journals Two dominant security concepts in Europe and its influence on Ukraine

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (S4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Serhii O. Lysenko ◽  
Vladislav O. Veklych ◽  
Myhailo V. Kocherov ◽  
Ivan V. Servetskiy ◽  
Tetiana B. Arifkhodzhaieva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Coordinate System ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Governance Models

The article is devoted to the analysis of two dominant security concepts in the modern world. Given the long bipolarity of the world, due to the dominance of the Horde and Westphalian concepts of security, the question arises about the place of Ukraine in this coordinate system. In the process of research, a historical analysis of the emergence, formation and dissemination of two, alternative concepts of security, which are characteristic of countries with different governance models. It was found that Russia and China, given the geographical and geopolitical situation and the peculiarities of the historical process, adapted and creatively refined the Horde concept of security inherent in the state of Genghis Khan. Instead, Western European countries, and later the United States, formed a concept of security based on the principles laid down by the Westphalian system in the seventeenth century. The main features of the Horde concept of security (according to H. Chkhartishvili), which is based on strict centralization, sacredness of the ruler's personality and the dominance of privileges over rights, are highlighted.

Machines

On Purpose ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 42-60
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Change ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter discusses the Scientific Revolution that is dated from the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, the work that put the sun rather than the earth at the center of the universe to Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687, the work that gave the causal underpinnings of the whole system as developed over the previous one hundred and fifty years. Historian Rupert Hall put his finger precisely on the real change that occurred in the revolution. It was not so much the physical theories, although these were massive and important. It was rather a change of metaphors or models—from that of an organism to that of a machine. By the sixteenth century, machines were becoming ever more common and ever more sophisticated. It was natural therefore for people to start thinking of the world—the universe—as a machine, especially since some of the most elaborate of the new machines were astronomical clocks that had the planets and the sun and moon moving through the heavens, not by human force but by predestined contraptions. In a word, by clockwork!

The Nature of the Early Royal Society: Part I

1976 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Theodore Hoppen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Working Out

The foundation of the Royal Society marks an important step in the institutionalization of seventeenth-century British natural philosophy. The society's existence and activities provided a focus for the exchange of opinions, while its meetings and publications became forums for scientific debate. Some writers, however, have claimed much more than this for the society and have seen its establishment as marking a real watershed between, on the one hand, intellectually ‘conservative elements’ and, on the other, a set of ‘definite philosophical principles … inspiring … progressive minds’. Others have gone still further and argued not only that the society's activities ‘enormously’ accelerated ‘the development of natural sciences’, but that these activities were the result of the ‘working out of a conscious, deliberately-conceived ideal’. But views which see a single, logically consistent conception of the nature of the scientific enterprise informing the work and outlook of the Royal Society and its members involve a serious oversimplification of the complexity of natural philosophy in the late seventeenth century. Despite some important work published in recent years, we are still far from achieving a satisfactory understanding of the complicated web of traditions, sources, and intellectual systems that provided both an inspirational dynamic for the work of natural philosophers such as those in the Royal Society and patterns of expression through which their preoccupations could be articulated. Thus the many studies which have been devoted to establishing connexions between the scientific movement and patterns of religious or political belief have been flawed from the start by unreal assumptions about the degree of intellectual coherence presented by the natural philosophy of the time. And until we can present a more three-dimensional picture of what the 'scientific movement’ was in fact all about, and until wider agreement has been reached as to satisfactory definitions of various types of socio-theological attitude and behaviour, such studies are no more than attempts to tie together two unknowns by means of a rope of sand.

scholarly journals Chaos & Creation: Adam van Vianen's Gilt Ewer

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-215
Author(s):  
Jessica Whittle
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
The World ◽  
Melting Surface ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Careful Design

With its bizarre melting surface and the solid forms emerging out of it, this seventeenth-century ewer by the goldsmith Adam van Vianen arouses curiosity and invites investigation. Commissioned in memory of his brother, Paulus van Vianen, who largely developed the auricular style perfected in it, this ewer is a work that rewards exploration – the more you investigate the more there is to see and be delighted by. The incredibly complicated construction of this piece attests to evident careful design and intent in every form in it, raising the question as to their individual meaning and the message they convey as a whole. This study answers the ewer’s call to curiosity by investigating the meanings of the individual forms and the commonalities that connect them as a group. The result is a surprising journey into the world of seventeenth-century alchemy, natural philosophy and Kunstkammers. Research into the iconographical meaning of both the visible forms and the folding surface in the context in which it was created has led the author of this analysis to conclude that the ewer functions as an allegory for the process of artistic creation, visualizing the artist bringing life into the world out of chaos.

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