The Normalisation of Natural Philosophy: Occasional Causality and Coarse-Grained Reality

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-236
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Mutual Adaptation ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Conceptual Changes ◽  
Preliminary Application ◽  
The Way

This article investigates whether it possible to derive a new narrative about the transformation of early modern natural philosophy from the way in which natural philosophy was systematized in academic writings. It introduces the notion of ‘normalisation’—the mutual adaptation of certain ideas and existing traditions—as a way of studying and explaining conceptual changes during relatively long periods of time. The article provides the methodological underpinnings of this account of normalisation and offers a preliminary application of it by focusing on the role of ‘occasional causality’ in natural philosophy through the writings of four authors: Pierre Sylvain Régis (1632-1707), Johann Christoph Sturm (1635-1703), Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761), and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who progressively normalise an account of ‘occasional causality’.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
History Of ◽  
Discrete Domain

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the place of biology in early modern natural philosophy. “Biology,” though it did not yet exist in name, or even as a discrete domain of scientific inquiry, was at the very heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Yet while in recent decades much important scholarly work has emerged on the early modern life sciences, the perception persists in the broader scholarly community that the seventeenth century was principally a period in which physics was of central importance. The chapter considers the role of the phenomena of life in the systems of Aristotle, Descartes, and Hobbes in the background of Leibniz's philosophy. It then summarizes the main points on which Leibniz distinguishes his theory from those of his predecessors in the history of philosophical reflection on the nature, structure, and generation of living entities.

scholarly journals Who’s Afraid of the Audience? Digital and Post-Digital Perspectives on Aesthetics

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotte Philipsen
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Practical Analysis ◽  
The Way

This article analyses how works of art that make use of or refer to digital technology can be approached, analysed, and understood aesthetically from two different perspectives. One perspective, which I shall term a ‘digital’ perspective, mainly focuses on poetics (or production) and technology when approach- ing the works, whereas the other, which I shall term a ‘post-digital’ perspective, focuses on aesthetic experience (or reception) when approaching the works. What I tentatively and for the purpose of practical analysis term the ‘digital’ and the ‘post-digital’ perspectives do not designate two different sets of concrete works of art or artistic practice and neither do they describe different periods.[1] Instead, the two perspectives co-exit as different discursive positions that are concretely ex- pressed in the way we talk about aesthetics in relation to art that makes use of and/or refers to digital technology. In short: When I choose here to talk about a digital and a post-digital perspective, I talk about two fundamentally different ways of ascribing aes- thetic meaning to (the same) concrete works of art. By drawing on the ideas of especially Immanuel Kant and Dominic McIver Lopes, it is the overall purposes of this article to ana- lyse and compare how the two perspectives understand the concept of aesthetics and to discuss some of the implications following from these understandings. As it turns out, one of the most significant implications is the role of the audience. 

Bacon’s Novum organum

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-46
Author(s):  
Elodie Cassan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Way

Dan Garber’s paper provides materials permitting to reply to an objection frequently made to the idea that the Novum Organum is a book of logic, as the allusion to Aristotle’s Organon included in the very title of this book shows it is. How can Bacon actually build a logic, considering his repeated claims that he desires to base natural philosophy directly on observation and experiment? Garber shows that in the Novum Organum access to experience is always mediated by particular questions and settings. If there is no direct access to observation and experience, then there is no point in equating Bacon’s focus on experience in the Novum Organum with a rejection of discursive issues. On the contrary, these are two sides of the same coin. Bacon’s articulation of rules for the building of scientific reasoning in connection with the way the world is, illustrates his massive concern with the relation between reality, thinking and language. This concern is essential in the field of logic as it is constructed in the Early Modern period.

Animism, Aristotelianism, and the Legacy of William Gilbert’s De Magnete

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-188
Author(s):  
Jeff Kochan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Physical Experiments ◽  
Modern Natural

Abstract William Gilbert’s 1600 book, De magnete, greatly influenced early modern natural philosophy. The book describes an impressive array of physical experiments, but it also advances a metaphysical view at odds with the soon to emerge mechanical philosophy. That view was animism. I distinguish two kinds of animism – Aristotelian and Platonic – and argue that Gilbert was an Aristotelian animist. Taking Robert Boyle as an example, I then show that early modern arguments against animism were often effective only against Platonic animism. In fact, unacknowledged traces of Aristotelian animism can be found in Boyle’s mechanical account of nature. This was Gilbert’s legacy.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
New Materials ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Topic ◽  
History Of Universities

This monographic issue of History of Universities presents new materials and case studies in order to deepen our understanding of the role of the academic milieu in the early modern reshaping of natural philosophy. The contributions included in this volume aim to pursue two main axes of research: (1) the reconstruction and exploration of the dialectics between tradition and innovation in the reshaping of natural philosophy; (2) the attempt to constitute and consolidate new traditions in natural philosophy. This introduction presents the general topic of the volume, the methodological approach developed by the contributors and the contents of each contribution.

Sine Qua Non Causation

2019 ◽  
pp. 215-248
Author(s):  
Andrea Sangiacomo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Efficient Causation ◽  
The Way

Kant’s New Elucidation (1755) is an important source for understanding how early modern debates managed to import and adapt the notion of sine qua non causation in the domain of natural philosophy. In order to clarify Kant’s position, the chapter focuses on two preliminary historical moments: the marginalization of sine qua non causation in Suárez’s account of efficient causation and the forceful revival of sine qua non causation in Malebranche’s occasionalism. In the New Elucidation Kant adopts an understanding of causation similar to that of Malebranche, while also clarifying the way in which God’s involvement in nature has to be understood. In so doing, Kant takes issue with some of the ambiguities of Malebranche’s own account that were hotly debated by his contemporaries.

Reading Books in Natural Philosophy: How Conrad Gessner‘s Commentary on De Anima (1563) was Annotated and Interpreted

2017 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-89
Author(s):  
Anja-Silvia Goeing
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Preventive Healthcare ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Object Of Study

Conrad Gessner (1516–65) was town physician and lecturer at the Zwinglian reformed lectorium in Zurich. His approach towards the world and mankind was centred on his preoccupation with the human soul, an object of study that had challenged classical writers such as Aristotle and Galen, and which remained as important in post-Reformation debate. Writing commentaries on Aristotles De Anima (On the Soul) was part of early-modern natural philosophy education at university and formed the preparatory step for studying medicine. This article uses the case study of Gessners commentary on De Anima (1563) to explore how Gessners readers prioritised De Animas information. Gessners intention was to provide the students of philosophy and medicine with the most current and comprehensive thinking. His readers responses raise questions about evolving discussions in natural philosophy and medicine that concerned the foundations of preventive healthcare on the one hand, and of anatomically specified pathological medicine on the other, and Gessners part in helping these develop.

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