Henry Cavendish: A Study of Rational Empiricism in Eighteenth-Century Natural Philosophy

Isis ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell McCormmach
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy

Music and the Origins of Ancient Science

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pesic
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Arithmetic Geometry ◽  
Web Browsers ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Ancient Science

Music entered deeply into the making of modern science because it was a crucial element of ancient natural philosophy, through which it thereafter remained active well into the formation of the “new philosophy” during the seventeenth century. The Pythagorean connection between music, numbers, and the sensual world remained potent in the quadrivium, the four-fold study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music that was the centerpiece of higher education until about the eighteenth century. This chapter surveys the ongoing connection between music and its sister sciences in the quadrivium from Plato and the Pythagoreans to Nicomachus and Boethius. The mythical story of Pythagoras in the blacksmith shop arguably represents the earliest recorded experiment, in the later sense of that word. Ancient Greek distinctions between number and magnitude were crucial elements in the unfolding interaction between arithmetic, geometry, and music. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Martin Folkes

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
New Science ◽  
Definition Of

In 1750, Martin Folkes became the only individual who was President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, and he contributed to efforts to unite both organizations. Although he failed, illness forcing him to resign both offices, this chapter outlines the book’s analysis of the ensuing disciplinary boundaries between the two organizations in the early Georgian era in the context of Folkes’s life and letters. While it is normally assumed that natural philosophy and antiquarianism are disciplines that were fast becoming disconnected in this period, this work will reconsider these assumptions. The Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries were nearly reunited for good reason. Both societies incorporated techniques and affinities from antiquarianism—natural history and landscape—and the ‘new science’—engineering principles, measurement, and empiricism. Using Folkes’s life and letters, this biography will examine the disciplinary boundaries between the humanities and sciences in early Georgian Britain and reassess the extent to which the separation of these ‘two cultures’ developed in this era. It will also consider to what extent Folkes continued the Newtonian programme in mathematics, optics, and astronomy on the Continent. In this manner, the work will refine its definition of Newtonianism and its scope in the early eighteenth century, elucidating and reclaiming the vibrant research programme that Folkes promoted in the period of English science least well understood between the age of Francis Bacon and the present.

Literary Knowledge

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-43
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Fundamental Component ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Tool

Natural philosophy in the long eighteenth century connoted a sense of modernity and enlightenment, attributes that bound science to meanings in excess of its practice and consumption. The pliancy of science as a trope finds support in reflections on language as a scientific tool by Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and other natural philosophers. The two dominant technologies of the experimental imagination are the observed particular and the modest witness. Observed particulars of empirical study are those nuggets of data that disclose themselves and, in their revelation, produce knowledge. The modest witness is the individual who is objective by virtue of erasing himself through his privilege. Tropes are literary tools that not only enable practitioners to describe scientific findings, but also enable an even more fundamental component of experimentalism: literariness makes possible the conceptualization of scientific findings and the individual who produces them.

I PUNTI DI ZENONE: UNA PREISTORIA VICHIANA

Nuncius ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-425
Author(s):  
PAOLO ROSSI
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Strong Line ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
The Continuum

Abstracttitle SUMMARY /title This study considers the reasons for the radical incompatibility between atomist theses and the conclusions reached by the Council of Trent on the sacrament of the Eucharist. The texts of several seventeenth century Jesuits - Suarez, Pereira, Arriaga and Oviedo - are examined here. Present in these texts is an attempt to develop a natural philosophy alternative to the Aristotelian one, capable of retaining its distance from impious atomism, but, nonetheless, adopting certain central aspects concerning belief in discontinuity and indivisibles. A strong line of demarcation between Aristotelians and anti-Aristotelians can be traced through their differing conceptions of the continuum. Zenonism (which regards the continuum as composed of points) was defended on various occasions in the Jesuit context, and was also repressed and condemned a number of times. In the background to these problems, the atomism of Galileo is reconsidered, and the "atomism of points" described theoretically by Boscovich is examined. Even during the seventeenth century, however, mention was frequently made of a particular type of atomists who regarded atoms as without extension. Many Vico scholars regarded his profession of Zenonims (central to his De antiquissima of 1710) as a "philosophical invention of Vico". In reality, however, Vico had a Zenonist Jesuit as his teacher, and his entire discussion of "metaphysical points" is linked to a specific and very little known philosophical tradition. In the whole of Europe between the middle of the seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth century, Zenonist was a term in common use, and was readly comprehensible, like Scotist, or, in more recent times, Popperian.

‘A treasure of hidden vertues’: the attraction of magnetic marketing

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Fara
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Instrument Maker ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Face ◽  
Magnetic Phenomena ◽  
Samuel Pepys

When customers like Samuel Pepys visited the shop of Thomas Tuttell, instrument maker to the king, they could purchase a pack of mathematical playing-cards. The seven of spades, reproduced as Figure 1, depicted the diverse connotations of magnets, or loadstones. These cards cost a shilling, and were too expensive for many of the surveyors, navigators and other practitioners shown using Tuttell's instruments. They provide an early example of the products promising both diversion and improvement which were increasingly marketed to polite audiences. Tuttell's description of loadstone as ‘a treasure of hidden vertues’ encapsulated many contemporary perceptions of these naturally occurring magnets which were to endure throughout the century. This phrase, with its hints of concealed financial and epistemological benefits, resonates with major eighteenth-century analytical themes, such as commercialization, the opposition between vice and virtue, and the fascination with the occult in the face of Enlightenment rationality. This card is emblematic of the multiple interpretations and utilizations of magnetic phenomena during the eighteenth century. It thus provides a useful starting-point for exploring some of the disputes which arose as enterprising individuals concerned with natural philosophy promoted themselves, their activities and their products.

Translating the Concept of Experiment in the Late Eighteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Eirini Goudarouli ◽  
Dimitris Petakos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Different Cultures

The Philosophical Grammar: Being a View of the Present State of Experimented Physiology, or Natural Philosophy, In Four Parts (1735) by Benjamin Martin was translated into Greek by Anthimos Gazis in 1799. According to the history of concepts, no political, social, or intellectual activity can occur without the establishment of a common vocabulary of basic concepts. By interfering in the linguistic structure, the act of translation may affect crucially the encounter of different cultures. By bringing together the history of science and the history of concepts, this article treats the transfer of the concept of experiment from the seventeenth-century British philosophical context to the eighteenth-century Greek-speaking intellectual context. The article focuses mainly on the different ways Gazis’s translation contributed to the construction of a particular conceptual framework for the appropriation of new knowledge.

Leibniz and Newton as Critics of Descartes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Janiak
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy

Leibniz and Newton famously disagreed on many philosophical and mathematical topics. Indeed, their disagreements are legion in the eighteenth century and beyond. But underlying their disputes, there are some important and illuminating similarities in their reactions to Cartesian natural philosophy. The Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, along with certain interpretations of the vis viva dispute, have obscured these similarities, which are an important aspect of our understanding of Newton’s work.

Matter and Spirit as Natural Symbols in eighteenth-century British natural philosophy

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. B. Wilde
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Chemical Approach ◽  
Matter Theory ◽  
Natural Philosophers

During the course of the eighteenth century important changes occurred in the conception of matter held by British natural philosophers. Historians of science have described these changes in different ways, but certain common features can be abstracted from the more recent accounts. First, there was a movement away from Newtonian matter theory, which saw all matter as the various organizations of homogeneous particles and the forces of attraction and repulsion acting between them. In place of this theory increasing favour was shown towards a more empirical or ‘chemical’ approach to matter which assumed the existence of several essentially distinct types of matter each endowed with different specific qualities or properties. Second, there was an increasing tendency to accept activity as a property of matter itself rather than to ascribe it to immaterial forces.

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