John Philoponus on Physical Place

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis Papachristou
Keyword(s):  
Physical Model ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Major Topic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

This book examines the place of physical bodies, a major topic of natural philosophy that has occupied philosophers since antiquity. Aristotle’s conceptions of place (topos) and the void (kenon), as expounded in the Physics, were systematically repudiated by John Philoponus (ca. 485-570) in his philosophical commentary on that work. The primary philosophical concern of the present study is the in-depth investigation of the concept of place established by Philoponus, putting forward the claim that the latter offers satisfactory solutions to problems raised by Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition regarding the nature of place. Philoponus’ account proposes a specific physical model of how physical bodies exist and move in place, and regards place as an intrinsic reality of the physical cosmos. Due to exactly this model, his account may be considered as strictly pertaining to the study of physics, thereby constituting a remarkable episode in the history of philosophy and science.

Francis Bacon and the Aristotelian Tradition on the Nature of Sound

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-25
Author(s):  
Claudia Dumitru ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Local Motion ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

Centuries II and III of Francis Bacon’s posthumous natural history Sylva Sylvarum are largely dedicated to sound. This paper claims that Bacon’s investigation on this topic is fruitfully read against the background of the Aristotelian theory of sound, as presented in De anima commentaries. I argue that Bacon agreed with the general lines of this tradition in a crucial aspect: he rejected the reduction of sound to local motion. Many of the experimental instances and more theoretical remarks from his natural history of sound can be elucidated against this wider concern of distinguishing sound from motion, a theme that had been a staple of Aristotelian discussions of sound and hearing since the Middle Ages. Bacon admits that local motion is part of the efficient cause of sound, but he denies that it is its form, which means that sound cannot be reduced to a type of local motion. This position places him outside subsequent developments in natural philosophy in the seventeenth century.

scholarly journals Dimitrije Matic: Hegelianism and Naturalism

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-151
Author(s):  
Boris Milosavljevic
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Short Review ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
Friedrich Schelling ◽  
Political Views ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

Dimitrije Matic (1821-1884) was a philosopher, jurist, professor of public law at the Belgrade Lyceum and politician. He served as Serbia?s Minister of Education and Church Affairs, acting Foreign Minister, Speaker of the Parliament, and member of the State Council. He was president of the Serbian Society of Letters and member of the Serbian Learned Society. Matic belonged to Serbian liberal-minded intellectual circles. He believed that the rule of force was unacceptable and that governments should promote and support popular education. Matic studied philosophy and law in Serbia (Kragujevac, Belgrade), Germany (Berlin, Heidelberg) and France (Paris), and received his doctorial degree in philosophy in Leipzig. In Berlin Matic embraced Hegel?s speculative philosophy and theory of state (philosophy of law). Among his professors were Georg Andreas Gabler (Hegel`s immediate successor), Otto Friedrich Gruppe, Wilhelm Vatke etc. In Halle he listened to another Hegelian, Johann Eduard Erdmann. He had the opportunity to attend Friedrich Schelling?s lectures on the philosophy of mythology. If the Right Hegelians developed Hegel?s philosophy along the lines they considered to be in accordance with Christian theology, and the Left Hegelians laid the emphasis on the anti-Christian tendencies of Hegel?s system and pushed it in the direction of materialism and socialism, Matic would be closer to the first. Actually, he was mostly influenced by his professor Karl Ludwig Michelet, with whom he established a lifelong friendship. Matic?s doctorial thesis (Dissertatio de via qua Fichtii, Schellingii, Hegeliique philosophia e speculativa investigatione Kantiana exculta sit) addressed the question of how the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel developed from Kantian speculative thought. The paper deals with the question whether Matic took a shift from Hegelianism to Positivism (Naturalism) in the 1860s, which is a claim that was taken for granted in the Yugoslav (Serbian) Marxist histories of Serbian philosophy after the Second World War and Communist revolution. In fact, it is rooted in Milan Kujundzic-Aberdar?s (1842-1893) periodization of the Serbian philosophical literature. Kujundzic, professor of Philosophy at the Belgrade Great School, classified Matic?s Science of Education into the latest period of natural philosophy. In order to answer the question, the paper looks into the evolution of Matic?s philosophical, legal and political views. Matic followed Hegelian philosophy in his: Short Review (according to Hegel?s ? Psychology in Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences); Principles of Rational [Vernunftrecht] State Law [Staatslehre] according to Heinrich Zepfel?s book on the philosophy of law (Grunds?tze des allgemeinen und des konstitutionell-monarchischen Staatsrechts and Hegel?s Philosophy of Law) and History of Philosophy (according to Albert Schwegler?s History of Philosophy). There is nothing in Matic?s Science of Education that would corroborate the claim that he shifted from Hegelianism to Positivism. Though he had to attune his views to the changed, anti- Hegelian, intellectual climate and influences on academic life, he remained a Hegelian. The paper deals with the reasons why the Marxist histories of Serbian philosophy insisted on his alleged conversion.

Die Opposition des Johannes de Polliaco gegen die Schule der Gandavistae

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 115-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludwig Hödl
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Modal Interpretation ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Albert The Great ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Lasting Influence ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

In spite of the fact that Henry of Gent (†1293) had a major and lasting influence on the developments at the University of Paris after the condemnation of the errores philosophorum in 1277, the Gandavistae – pupils of Henry of Gent – are hardly known by their proper names in the history of philosophy. As a member of the theological and philosophical faculty, Henry broke with the predominant Averroistic approach to Aristotle’s conception of science and concentrated, instead, on the Aristotelian tradition. He defended a revised version of the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories along the lines of the pseudo-Boethian Liber de sex principiis and ascribed fundamental eminence to relatio, a category which was considered ontologically “debilissimus” among the Aristotelians. John de Polliaco († p. 1321) was a pupil of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Gent and Godfrey of Fontaines during the seventies of the 13th century. In his Quodlibet I, q. 7, dating from 1307, he gave a controversial account of the notion of relation that was favoured by Henry’s adherents: “Does the relation, expressed as a (modal) respect, differ from the respects (respectus) expressed by the six principles?” In this discussion he attacks the intentional and modal interpretation given by the Gandavistae and calls them non-reales. Is this accusation already an indication of the rise of 14th century nominalism?

scholarly journals Peter Anstey on Locke's Natural Philosophy

Locke Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 167-194
Author(s):  
Jonathan Craig Walmsley
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Review Article ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oxford University Press

Peter Anstey’s book John Locke on Natural Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) (henceforth JLNP), presented an interpretation of Locke’s work on science and medicine, and how this shaped his philosophical views. It was wide-ranging in scope and often impressively detailed. It raised a number of questions about Locke’s relationship to the work of J. B. van Helmont, his collaboration with Thomas Sydenham, and the overall chronology and trajectory of his natural philosophical interests. It also occasioned a number of questions about methodology in the history of philosophy and how we should construct an interpretation of a thinker like Locke from the published, manuscript and historical records available. Some of these questions were posed explicitly in a ‘Review Article’ in these pages.

scholarly journals The roots of human responsibility

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (46) ◽  
pp. 307
Author(s):  
Angela Michelis
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Responsibility ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

Starting from Hans Jonas’ works, this essay researches the bases of human responsibility and its reasoning is made up of four points. 1. He was aware of how his experience had influenced his thought and he questioned what means reflecting starting from extreme situations: «The apocalyptic state of things, the threatening collapse of a world, the climatic crisis of civilization, the proximity of death, the stark nakedness to which all the issues of life were stripped, all these were ground enough to take a new look at the very foundations of our being and to review the principles by which we guide our thinking on them». 2. Faced with these situations he rediscovered the richness of the Ancients’ thought. For example, the Stoics inherited and transformed the illuminating aspects of the theory that conceived of the ‘being’ as contemplation of the whole, which had permeated Greek natural philosophy and scientific speculation. They took it on as the capacity to identify one’s own most internal principle with the principle of the whole, in a more religious sense. The discovery in the whole of what is felt to be the highest and noblest in human beings – like reason, order, and form - makes our orientation towards a super-regulating end a liberating wisdom. 3. Jonas considers that starting from XVII century  the two aspects, here distinct as external and internal, remain at the core of the issue so far as the problem of freedom is concerned. Moreover, theoretical efforts now move in the direction of rendering, of discovering a conception of freedom which is logically compatible with causal determinism, while in the history of philosophy, the problem of freedom was not born in the sphere of logic. So it is necessary to rethink Modernity and how it is possible to found human freedom and responsibility nowadays.

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