scholarly journals Physica in John Locke's Adversaria and Classifications of the Branches of Knowledge

Locke Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 69-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuliana Di Biase
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Material World ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
The One ◽  
Theoretical Science

The framework of the various schemes of Physica in Locke’s classifications of knowledge (ca. 1670-1687) shows relevant traces of what may be defined, in a very broad sense, as an Aristotelian model: the internal divisions of this science are shaped into the classical ordering of the Stagirite’s physical works, as was common in seventeenth-century Aristotelian texts on natural philosophy. However, Locke’s schemes are also evidence of his uneasiness with that model, especially with reference to the first part—the one containing the fundamentals of physics, or physica generalis—and the last, concerning the objects of sense— one of the branches of physica specialis. This uneasiness was clearly due to Locke’s adherence to mechanism (in particular to Boyle’s mechanism) as well as to his empiricism. The last scheme of Physica (ca. 1687) shows Locke’s detachment from the Aristotelian model and his adhesion to Pansophism: the object of physica generalis, which in the earlier schemes was circumscribed to the material world, is re-conceptualised in broader terms which include spiritual beings. This later scheme is also evidence of a redefinition of Physica as a theoretical science, a point which was somewhat obscured in Locke’s previous schemes by the location of the discipline after the practical sciences. The various adversaria Locke wrote in 1677 help to illuminate his way of conceiving the object and scope of Physica; they show the relevance he attributed to the Baconian method of natural history, as well as the priority he assigned to useful knowledge with respect to speculative knowledge.

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.

The Nature of the Early Royal Society: Part I

1976 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Theodore Hoppen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Working Out

The foundation of the Royal Society marks an important step in the institutionalization of seventeenth-century British natural philosophy. The society's existence and activities provided a focus for the exchange of opinions, while its meetings and publications became forums for scientific debate. Some writers, however, have claimed much more than this for the society and have seen its establishment as marking a real watershed between, on the one hand, intellectually ‘conservative elements’ and, on the other, a set of ‘definite philosophical principles … inspiring … progressive minds’. Others have gone still further and argued not only that the society's activities ‘enormously’ accelerated ‘the development of natural sciences’, but that these activities were the result of the ‘working out of a conscious, deliberately-conceived ideal’. But views which see a single, logically consistent conception of the nature of the scientific enterprise informing the work and outlook of the Royal Society and its members involve a serious oversimplification of the complexity of natural philosophy in the late seventeenth century. Despite some important work published in recent years, we are still far from achieving a satisfactory understanding of the complicated web of traditions, sources, and intellectual systems that provided both an inspirational dynamic for the work of natural philosophers such as those in the Royal Society and patterns of expression through which their preoccupations could be articulated. Thus the many studies which have been devoted to establishing connexions between the scientific movement and patterns of religious or political belief have been flawed from the start by unreal assumptions about the degree of intellectual coherence presented by the natural philosophy of the time. And until we can present a more three-dimensional picture of what the 'scientific movement’ was in fact all about, and until wider agreement has been reached as to satisfactory definitions of various types of socio-theological attitude and behaviour, such studies are no more than attempts to tie together two unknowns by means of a rope of sand.

scholarly journals Natural history in the physician's study: Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680), Steven Blankaart (1650–1705) and the ‘paperwork’ of observing insects

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
SASKIA KLERK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Inductive Reasoning ◽  
General Rule ◽  
The Way

Abstract While some seventeenth-century scholars promoted natural history as the basis of natural philosophy, they continued to debate how it should be written, about what and by whom. This look into the studios of two Amsterdam physicians, Jan Swammerdam (1637–80) and Steven Blankaart (1650–1705), explores natural history as a project in the making during the second half of the seventeenth century. Swammerdam and Blankaart approached natural history very differently, with different objectives, and relying on different traditions of handling specimens and organizing knowledge on paper, especially with regard to the way that individual observations might be generalized. These traditions varied from collating individual dissections into histories, writing both general and particular histories of plants and animals, collecting medical observations and applying inductive reasoning. Swammerdam identified the essential changes that insects underwent during their life cycle, described four orders based on these ‘general characteristics’ and presented his findings in specific histories that exemplified the ‘general rule’ of each order. Blankaart looked to the collective observations of amateurs to support his reputation as a man of medicine, but this was not supposed to lead to any kind of generalization. Their work alerts us to the variety of observational practices that were available to them, and with what purposes they made these their own.

Representation of Innovation in Seventeenth-Century England

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
Benoît Godin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Science And Research ◽  
Radical Transformation ◽  
Present Understanding

Our present understanding of innovation is closely linked to science and research on the one hand and economy and industry on the other. It has not always been so. Back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the concept was mainly used in religious and political discourses. In these contexts, actors used it in a pejorative sense. Innovation, imagined as a radical transformation, was considered a peril to the established social order. Such was natural philosophers’ understanding. This article documents Francis Bacon’s work as an eminent example of such a representation. To Bacon, natural philosophy and innovation are two distinct spheres of activity. It is documented that Bacon’s uses of the concept of innovation are found mainly in political, legal, and moral writings, not natural philosophy, because to Bacon and all others of his time, innovation is poli tical.

Robert Plot: Britain's 'genial father of county natural histories'

1985 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-177 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Small Area ◽  
Great Benefit ◽  
Regional Study ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Histories ◽  
John Leland

Robert Plot (1640—1696) has deservedly been called the ‘genial father of County Natural Histories in Britain’ for his work in this Field. Like his friend John Aubrey, Plot was interested in promoting useful knowledge, emphasizing how his own work would contribute ‘to the great benefit of Trade, and advantage of the People’. Also like the famous Aubrey he was interested in the supernatural and therefore he included accounts of occult phenomena in his natural histories. His Natural History of Oxfordshire, published after a lengthy period when natural history was still experiencing some difficulty in firmly superseding the chorographic element in the field of regional study, was chiefly responsible for popularizing regional natural history. It was deliberately intended by its author to supplement the ‘Civil and Geographicall Historys’ which up to that time still managed to exert an influence on the field as a whole. These ‘Civil and Geographicall Historys’ were generally called ‘chorographies’ by most of Plot’s fellow virtuosi, a name originally derived from the Classical Greek art of chorography whose purpose, according to Ptolemy, was to treat the geography and history of a relatively small area of the Earth’s surface. This genre was practiced by W illiam Camden, John Leland and other sixteenth and early seventeenth-century men, who adapted it to their own particular purposes. Plot, however, was one of the first ‘regional writers’ to discard many of the methods and interests of the chorographers, preferring rather to scientifically investigate the natural history.

The Isomorphism of Space, Time and Matter in Seventeenth-century Natural Philosophy

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 296-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Rita Palmerino
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Space Time ◽  
The Other ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Acceleration And Deceleration ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article documents the general tendency of seventeenth-century natural philosophers, irrespective of whether they were atomists or anti-atomists, to regard space, time and matter as magnitudes having the same internal composition. It examines the way in which authors such as Fromondus, Basson, Sennert, Arriaga, Galileo, Magnen, Descartes, Gassendi, Charleton as well as the young Newton motivated their belief in the isomorphism of space, time and matter, and how this belief reflected on their views concerning the relation between geometry and physics. Special attention is paid to the fact that most of the authors mentioned above regarded rarefaction and condensation, on the one hand, and acceleration and deceleration, on the other hand, as analogous phenomena, which consequently had to be explained in similar terms.

scholarly journals “Immoderatus fervor ad intra coërcendus”

Nuncius ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 464-504
Author(s):  
Luca Ciancio
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Didactic Literature ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Agent Of Change

Abstract To explain how the element of fire, after a prevailing association with antichristian attitudes such as atheism and heresy was gradually rehabilitated in early modern natural philosophy and began to be perceived as a providential agent of change, debates in medicine, natural history, chemistry and theory of matter have been called into consideration. Changes of perception toward fire and its meanings that took place in Jesuit natural philosophy and emblematics can provide additional explanations, especially if we focus on the reactions to Athanasius Kircher’s ideas and representations of the Earth’s central fire by authoritative confreres such as Pierre Gautruche, Honoré Fabri, Paolo Casati and Giovanni Battista Tolomei. At the edge of the natural philosophical domain, Franz Reinzer’s Meteorologia philosophico-politica (1697) suggests that a reappraisal of the symbolic meaning of fire as a positive fervor capable of driving man to beneficial enterprises took place in Jesuit moral and didactic literature elaborating on Kircher’s views and images propounded in his Mundus subterraneus. This notion of fire as a christianized agent, however, did not imply any concession to the innovative views on the matter of fire worked out by Seventeenth-century corpuscularists.

Jesuit Concepts of Spatium Imaginarium and Thomas Hobbes's Doctrine of Space1

1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cees Leijenhorst
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Proper Perspective ◽  
The One

AbstractThomas Hobbes's doctrine of space is here considered as an example of the Nachzuirkung of Jesuit commentaries on Aristotle's natural philosophy (especially those by Toletus, Pereira, Suarez, Fonseca and the Conimbricenses) in seventeenth-century mechanistic science. Hobbes's doctrine of space can be reconstructed in terms of his intensive dialogue with late scholasticism, as represented in the works of several important Jesuit authors. Although he presents his concept of space as an alternative to the Aristotelian notion of place, there are some remarkable similarities between Hobbes's alternative notion of space and the concept of spatium imaginarium, found in the Jesuit commentaries. While Hobbes adopts many scholastic elements, he employs these to his own purposes. Thus, on the one hand, this article does not so much challenge Hobbes's "modernity", but rather tries to put it in its proper perspective. On the other hand, it tries to show the vitality and importance of Jesuit natural philosophy in non- or even anti-Aristotelian contexts.

Transmission of Renaissance herbal images to China: the Beitang copy of Mattioli’s commentaries on Dioscorides and its annotations

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-253
Author(s):  
Wu Huiyi ◽  
Zheng Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
National Library ◽  
Materia Medica ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Northern Chinese ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Animal Names ◽  
National Library Of China ◽  
Made In

The Beitang Collection, heritage of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit library in Beijing now housed in the National Library of China, contains an incomplete copy of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on an Italian edition of Pedanius Dioscorides's De materia medica (1568) bearing extensive annotations in Chinese. Two hundred odd plant and animal names in a northern Chinese patois were recorded alongside illustrations, creating a rare record of seventeenth-century Chinese folk knowledge and of Sino-Western interaction in the field of natural history. Based on close analysis of the annotations and other contemporary sources, we argue that the annotations were probably made in Beijing by one or more Chinese low-level literati and Jesuit missionaries during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. We also conclude that the annotations were most likely directed at a Chinese audience, to whom the Jesuits intended to illustrate European craftsmanship using Mattioli’s images. This document probably constitutes the earliest known evidence of Jesuits' attempts at transmitting the art of European natural history drawings to China.

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