On Glass-Drops: a Case Study of the Interplay Between Experimentation and Explanation in Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihnea Dobre
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy

Greek Aristotelianism in the seventeenth century: uncovering Cesare Cremonini in the works of Theophilos Korydalleus

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Agiotis
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Impact

This case-study concerns Greek Aristotelianism in the seventeenth century. More specifically, my article deals with the impact of neo-Aristotelianism upon the formation of the philosophical curriculum of the Greek-speaking world during that period. I examine aspects of the – rather understudied – influence exerted by Cesare Cremonini on Theophilos Korydalleus. The terms ‘authentic interpreters’/‘authentic interpretation’ and ‘νεώτεροι’ in Theophilos’ works of natural philosophy not only highlight the influence of Cremonini, but also hint at critical views held by the former, as well as terminology which is either absent or has a different meaning in treatises of the latter.

Thinking with Crocodiles: An Iconic Animal at the Intersection of Early-Modern Religion and Natural Philosophy

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spencer J. Weinreich
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Travel Narratives ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Christian Iconography ◽  
Analytical Tools

This paper seeks to explore how culturally and religiously significant animals could shape discourses in which they were deployed, taking the crocodile as its case study. Beginning with the textual and visual traditions linking the crocodile with Africa and the Middle East, I read sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travel narratives categorizing American reptiles as “crocodiles” rather than “alligators,” as attempts to mitigate the disruptive strangeness of the Americas. The second section draws on Ann Blair’s study of “Mosaic Philosophy” to examine scholarly debates over the taxonomic identity of the biblical Leviathan. I argue that the language and analytical tools of natural philosophy progressively permeated religious discourse. Finally, a survey of more than 25 extant examples of the premodern practice of displaying crocodiles in churches, as well as other crocodilian elements in Christian iconography, provides an explanation for the ubiquity of crocodiles in Wunderkammern, as natural philosophy appropriated ecclesial visual vocabularies.


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.

The Chalosse Rebellion: A Case Study in Seventeenth Century French Revolts

1970 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Robert W. Poetschke ◽  
George A. Rothrock
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century

The Nonconformist Inheritance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Bunyan ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Pilgrim's Progress ◽  
The Many ◽  
John Owen

This chapter analyses the editions, abridgements, and recommendations of texts by seventeenth-century nonconformists that were made by eighteenth-century dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England evangelicals. The nonconformist writers they chose include Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, John Owen, and John Bunyan. The editors and recommenders include Philip Doddridge, John Wesley, Edward Williams, Benjamin Fawcett, George Burder, John Newton, William Mason, and Thomas Scott. Detailed accounts are provided of the large number of Baxter’s works that were edited, notably A Call to the Unconverted and The Saints Everlasting Rest, and a case study is devoted to the many annotated editions of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the ways in which they were used. The editors took into account length, intelligibility, religious attitudes, and cost, and sometimes criticized their rivals’ versions on theological grounds.

Theological Foundations for Modern Science?

Dialogue ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
Theological Foundations ◽  
Recent Collection ◽  
Scientific Imagination

It is often said that philosophy in the seventeenth century returned from a Christian otherworldliness to a pagan engagement, theoretically and practically, with material nature. This process is often described as one of secularization, and the splitting off of science from natural philosophy and metaphysics is a traditional figure in accounts of the emergence of the modern. At the same time, the historiographical assumption that early modern science had religious and philosophical foundations has informed such classics as E. A. Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1932), Gerd Buchdahl's Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (1969), and Amos Funkenstein's Theology and the Scientific Imagination (1986). A recent collection testifies to continuing interest in the theme of a positive relationship between theology and science.

Alessandro Grandi: A Case Study in the Choice of Texts for Motets

1988 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-305
Author(s):  
Jerome Roche
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way ◽  
Musical Styles

It is perhaps still true that research into sacred types of music in early seventeenth-century Italy lags behind that into madrigal, monody and opera; it is certainly the case that the textual aspects of sacred music, themselves closely bound up with liturgical questions, have not so far received the kind of study that has been taken for granted with regard to the literary texts of opera and of secular vocal music. This is hardly to be wondered at: unlike great madrigal poetry or the work of the best librettists, sacred texts do not include much that can be valued as art in its own right. Nevertheless, if we are to understand better the context of the motet – as distinct from the musical setting of liturgical entities such as Mass, Vespers or Compline – we need a clearer view of the types of text that were set, the way in which composers exercised their choice, and the way such taste was itself changing in relation to the development of musical styles. For the motet was the one form of sacred music in which an Italian composer of the early decades of the seventeenth century could combine a certain freedom of textual choice with an adventurousness of musical idiom.

scholarly journals On the invisibility and impact of Robert Hooke’s theory of gravitation

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 266-282
Author(s):  
Niccolò Guicciardini
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Interplanetary Space ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Void Space ◽  
Trading Zone ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of Gravitation ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Scientific Framework

AbstractRobert Hooke’s theory of gravitation is a promising case study for probing the fruitfulness of Menachem Fisch’s insistence on the centrality of trading zone mediators for rational change in the history of science and mathematics. In 1679, Hooke proposed an innovative explanation of planetary motions to Newton’s attention. Until the correspondence with Hooke, Newton had embraced planetary models, whereby planets move around the Sun because of the action of an ether filling the interplanetary space. Hooke’s model, instead, consisted in the idea that planets move in the void space under the influence of a gravitational attraction directed toward the sun. There is no doubt that the correspondence with Hooke allowed Newton to conceive a new explanation for planetary motions. This explanation was proposed by Hooke as a hypothesis that needed mathematical development and experimental confirmation. Hooke formulated his new model in a mathematical language which overlapped but not coincided with Newton’s who developed Hooke’s hypothetical model into the theory of universal gravitation as published in the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687). The nature of Hooke’s contributions to mathematized natural philosophy, however, was contested during his own lifetime and gave rise to negative evaluations until the last century. Hooke has been often contrasted to Newton as a practitioner rather than as a “scientist” and unfavorably compared to the eminent Lucasian Professor. Hooke’s correspondence with Newton seems to me an example of the phenomenon, discussed by Fisch in his philosophical works, of the invisibility in official historiography of “trading zone mediators,” namely, of those actors that play a role, crucial but not easily recognized, in promoting rational scientific framework change.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document