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.

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).

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.

John Birchensha and the Early Royal Society: Grand Scales and Scientific Composition

1990 ◽  
Vol 115 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leta E. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
String Vibrations ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

The concept of music as science, still a vital part of the natural philosophy of the seventeenth century, found a strong advocate in the early Royal Society, whose agenda frequently embraced musical topics. From the organization's inception in 1660 to the early eighteenth century the Society's minutes recount acoustical experiments performed at meetings and describe papers on topics ranging from string vibrations to music's medicinal powers.

scholarly journals Lives and Afterlives of the Lithophylacii Britannici ichnographia (1699), the First Illustrated Field Guide to English Fossils

Nuncius ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos ◽  
Edwin D. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Field Guide ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract The Lithophylacii Britannicii ichnographia [British figured stones] (1699) by Edward Lhwyd, the second keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, was the first illustrated field guide to English fossils. We analyse this book’s physical creation – the collection of specimens, their engravings and their use and reuse in eighteenth-century editions and collections that were in the transition to binomial taxonomy. With particular concentration on the Lithophylacii’s illustrations of fossils, this paper will first analyse how the specimens were collected. We will then examine the use of these specimens and subsequent editions of Lhwyd’s book, with a focus upon how the relationship between them was drawn on by collectors such as Sir Hans Sloane and Daniel Solander from 1680 to 1760. Finally, we will demonstrate how Ashmolean Keeper William Huddesford repurposed the illustrations for Lhwyd’s book for his eighteenth-century edition of the field guide, incorporating new classificatory schemes. Our analysis will give insight into how a late seventeenth-century book of natural philosophy was used and repurposed by natural historians and collectors before and during the development of Linnaean taxonomy.

Conclusion to Part I

Empiricisms ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 281-286
Author(s):  
Barry Allen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Medical Idea

The value of experiments as instruments of inquiry presupposes that experience is a source of knowledge distinct from reasoning, which was the medical idea Democritus and Epicurus drew into natural philosophy. The genius of empiricism is to use perception as an instrument with which to colonize the imperceptible for cognition. The European experiment with empiricism unfolds in two phases, the first spanning the centuries between Alcmaeon and Galen; the second, modernizing phase running from the sixteenth to eighteenth century, when experiments finally consolidated their role as the leading method in natural philosophy. Profiles of empiricism from antiquity to the twentieth century divide along the lines of theorematic and problematic accounts of the relation between experience and knowledge. Part I demonstrated the prominence of a problematic concept of experience in seventeenth century experimentalism. Part II reaches the same conclusion about the radical empiricists of the twentieth century.

Patrons of the Nation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Anton Howes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Social Barriers ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Académie Des Sciences ◽  
Active Pursuit

This chapter illustrates the eighteenth century as an age of improvement in which letters of scholars criss-crossed Europe and North America, even India or China, in an active pursuit and sharing of knowledge. It talks about the scholar's letters that transcended all political and social barriers and confirmed to a specific agenda set by Francis Bacon, an English politician and philosopher of the early seventeenth century. It also discusses the “Baconian programme,” which was aimed to accumulate and rigorously test knowledge. The chapter highlights the Baconian obsession with collection and cataloguing that was applied beyond natural philosophy, to history, archaeology, and ancient languages. It also mentions the founding of the “Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge” in 1660, as well as the establishment of the “Académie des Sciences” in France.

Víctor Navarro Brotóns, Disciplinas, Saberes y Prácticas. Filosofia natural, matemáticas y astronomía en la sociedad española de la época moderna (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2014), 496 pp. ISBN: 9788437094465

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luís Miguel Carolino
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
Practice Of Science

This chapter reviews the book Disciplinas, Saberes y Prácticas. Filosofia Natural, Matemáticas y Astronomía en la Sociedad Española de la Época Moderna (2014), by Víctor Navarro Brotóns. The book offers a fresh and comprehensive view on the practice of science and natural philosophy in early modern Spain. It is organised in three parts: The sixteenth century and early seventeenth century: the scientific Renaissance; The seventeenth century and early eighteenth century: scientific activity during the Scientific Revolution; and The eighteenth century (up to 1767). Underlying this organisation is the fundamental view that science and scientific activities flourished in Spain particularly during the sixteenth century, entered a period of relative ‘decline’ as the seventeenth century progressed, and experienced a revival in the eighteenth century.

The Reception of Descartes in the Seventeenth-Century Scottish Universities: Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy (1650–1680)

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Gellera
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy

In 1685, during the heyday of Scottish Cartesianism (1670–90), regent Robert Lidderdale from Edinburgh University declared Cartesianism the best philosophy in support of the Reformed faith. It is commonplace that Descartes was ostracised by the Reformed, and his role in pre-Enlightenment Scottish philosophy is not yet fully acknowledged. This paper offers an introduction to Scottish Cartesianism, and argues that the philosophers of the Scottish universities warmed up to Cartesianism because they saw it as a newer, better version of their own traditional Reformed scholasticism, chiefly in metaphysics and natural philosophy.

Common Law Constitutionalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Law System

This chapter shows how common law pleading, the use of common law vocabulary, and substantive common law rules lay at the foundation of every colony’s law by the middle of the eighteenth century. There is some explanation of how this common law system functioned in practice. The chapter then discusses why colonials looked upon the common law as a repository of liberty. It also discusses in detail the development of the legal profession individually in each of the thirteen colonies. Finally, the chapter ends with a discussion of the role of legislation. It shows that, although legislation had played an important role in the development of law and legal institutions in the seventeenth century, eighteenth-century Americans were suspicious of legislation, with the result that the output of pre-Revolutionary legislatures was minimal.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document