Chemical Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries

2020 ◽  
pp. 8-44
Author(s):  
Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Chemical Philosophy

This chapter provides the philosophical background for the discussion of Robert Boyle’s chemical philosophy by highlighting the most relevant theories that either influenced Boyle or to which Boyle was responding. The chapter begins by addressing the vitalistic character of Renaissance alchemy. The chapter then discusses the Scholastic theory of substantial form, to which Boyle seeks to provide an alternative. After this, the chapter addresses the Paracelsian spagyria and theory of the tria prima, since these come under specific attack in Boyle’s writings. The doctrines of semina rerum and minima naturalia are then discussed as they relate to vitalistic corpuscularian theories of matter. Finally, the theories and work of early modern alchemists Daniel Sennert and Jan Baptista van Helmont are discussed in detail since the experiments of these alchemists had a significant impact on the Boyle’s experimental work.

Francis Bacon's Natural History and the Senecan Natural Histories of Early Modern Europe

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 197-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Jalobeanu
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Traditional Natural ◽  
Natural Histories ◽  
Experimental History

AbstractAt various stages in his career, Francis Bacon claimed to have reformed and changed traditional natural history in such a way that his new “natural and experimental history” was unlike any of its ancient or humanist predecessors. Surprisingly, such claims have gone largely unquestioned in Baconian scholarship. Contextual readings of Bacon's natural history have compared it, so far, only with Plinian or humanist natural history. This paper investigates a different form of natural history, very popular among Bacon's contemporaries, but yet unexplored by contemporary students of Bacon's works. I have provisionally called this form of natural history 'Senecan' natural history, partly because it took shape in the Neo-Stoic revival of the sixteenth-century, partly because it originates in a particular cosmographical reading of Seneca's Naturales quaestiones. I discuss in this paper two examples of Senecan natural history: the encyclopedic and cosmographical projects of Pierre de la Primaudaye (1546–1619) and Samuel Purchas (1577–1626). I highlight a number of similarities between these two projects and Francis Bacon's natural history, and argue that Senecan natural history forms an important aspect in the historical and philosophical background that needs to be taken into consideration if we want to understand the extent to which Bacon's project to reform natural history can be said to be new.

The Ontological Complexity of Boyle’s Corpuscularian Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-108
Author(s):  
Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Stability ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Chemical Properties ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Fundamental Particles ◽  
Essential Form ◽  
Chemical Philosophy ◽  
Taxonomical Classification

This chapter gives a detailed account of Boyle’s chemical philosophy, placing special emphasis on his replacement of substantial form with the mechanistic notion of essential form as the source of chemical stability. For Boyle, essential form results from the structural arrangement of fundamental particles into aggregate corpuscles that account for a substance’s distinctive chemical properties. The chapter sets the background for Boyle’s theory of matter by first discussing his attack on the Scholastic notion of substantial form and on the Paracelsian principles of the tria prima. After this, the chapter focuses on Boyle’s distinctive mechanistic corpuscularianism, by highlighting the hierarchical aspects of this theory of composition and microstructure. The chapter then contrasts the views of Boyle and Locke regarding natural kinds and taxonomical classification and discusses the reduction to the pristine state, a key experiment used by Boyle to lend empirical support to the theory of microstructural essential form.

Chemical Philosophy vs. Rationalistic Mechanicism

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-78
Author(s):  
Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Modern Chemistry ◽  
Mechanistic Theory ◽  
Chemical Philosophy ◽  
Pierre Gassendi

This chapter focuses on the mechanical philosophy as it relates to early modern chemistry and chemical philosophy. The chapter begins by addressing the Cartesian rejection of Scholastic substantial forms, since this is one of the aspects of mechanicism that made it attractive to Boyle. After this, the chapter discusses the revival of Epicurean atomism and its reformation by Pierre Gassendi and other early modern atomists. The chapter then addresses the limitations of the Cartesian mechanical philosophy for chemistry and the tensions that existed between mechanicism and experimental natural philosophy, focusing especially on the views of the French Cartesians. Finally, the chapter then discusses Boyle’s own commitment to the mechanistic theory of matter. To this end, the chapter proposes to examine Boyle’s experimental research programme from a Lakatosian perspective, and suggests that the mechanical philosophy functioned both as a negative and as a positive heuristic within that research programme.

AVICENNA'S THEORY OF PRIMARY MIXTURE

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
ABRAHAM D. STONE
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
History Of

Ancient Peripatetics and Neoplatonists had great difficulty coming up with a consistent, interpretatively reasonable, and empirically adequate Aristotelian theory of complete mixture or complexion. I explain some of the main problems, with special attention to authors with whom Avicenna was familiar. I then show how Avicenna used a new doctrine of the occultness of substantial form (whose roots are found in Alfarabi) to address these problems. The result was in some respects an improvement, but it also gave rise to a new set of problems, which were later to prove fateful in the history of early modern philosophy.

Metaphysics and Material Modes

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-63
Author(s):  
Tad M. Schmaltz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Prime Matter ◽  
Material Substance ◽  
Modal Distinction

This chapter concerns the metaphysical basis for Suárez’s account of the material world. It begins with his “analogical” metaphysics, which constitutes a distinctive contribution to the medieval scholastic debate over the applicability of the notion of “being” to God and creatures. Then there is a consideration of Suárez’s introduction into the scholastic theory of distinctions of a modal distinction intermediate between the real and rational distinctions. This new intermediate distinction yields the first clear instance of the early modern notion of a mode. The chapter ends with an examination of the two material modes that are most important for Suárez, namely, the substantial mode of union, which serves to unite substantial form and prime matter, and the accidental mode of inherence, which accounts for the connection between a material substance and its “real accidents.”

Middle and Neoplatonism

2019 ◽  
pp. 248-325
Author(s):  
Filippo Del Lucchese
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
Philosophical Background

This is the longest chapter of the book, because of the number, nature, and importance of the philosophers that take the side of Plato and develop his teleological idealism in different directions. It also includes several early Christian thinkers – Augustin among them – whose philosophical background and inspiration are largely Platonic. For reasons of consistency, this chapter explores this complex and long-lived philosophical movement through the same categories that have been used in previous chapters, namely the conflict between immanence and transcendence, the questions of nature’s hierarchies, teleology and providence, as well as the origin of evil. However, new elements are introduced because of the puculiar reworking of these ideas within the new and original monotheism of the Judeo-Christian early tradition, as well as their importance for the later medieval and early modern philosophy.

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