The Normalisation of Natural Philosophy: Occasional Causality and Coarse-Grained Reality

This article investigates whether it possible to derive a new narrative about the transformation of early modern natural philosophy from the way in which natural philosophy was systematized in academic writings. It introduces the notion of ‘normalisation’—the mutual adaptation of certain ideas and existing traditions—as a way of studying and explaining conceptual changes during relatively long periods of time. The article provides the methodological underpinnings of this account of normalisation and offers a preliminary application of it by focusing on the role of ‘occasional causality’ in natural philosophy through the writings of four authors: Pierre Sylvain Régis (1632-1707), Johann Christoph Sturm (1635-1703), Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761), and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who progressively normalise an account of ‘occasional causality’.

Introduction

This monographic issue of History of Universities presents new materials and case studies in order to deepen our understanding of the role of the academic milieu in the early modern reshaping of natural philosophy. The contributions included in this volume aim to pursue two main axes of research: (1) the reconstruction and exploration of the dialectics between tradition and innovation in the reshaping of natural philosophy; (2) the attempt to constitute and consolidate new traditions in natural philosophy. This introduction presents the general topic of the volume, the methodological approach developed by the contributors and the contents of each contribution.

Caspar Langenhert’s Parisian ‘School of Egoists’ and the Reception of Geulincx’s Physics, from Occasionalism to Solipsism

This contribution focuses on an apparently obscure and seemingly abortive tradition that originated with Caspar Langenhert (1661–1730?) and the Parisian ‘sect’ he attempted to found, which the author sees as developing in Langenhert’s engagement with the work of Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669). Geulincx was professor of philosophy in Leiden and combined his sympathy for Cartesian metaphysics and natural philosophy with a thoroughly Calvinist agenda in theology and ethics. Owing to his premature death in the plague of 1669, Geulincx’s legacy remains difficult to assess. This contribution explores the ‘egoism’ supposedly advocated by Langenhert in the Novus Philosophus (1701-2) and at a controversial school opened by him in Paris in 1701. The unusual doctrines of Novus Philosophus most likely developed in response to ambiguities Langenhert saw in Geulincx’s physics, for which he provided a commentary in the 1688 Compendium Physicae. Langenhert claimed that neither Descartes nor ‘occasionalists’ could prove that the external world exists, that the existence of bodies outside of us is merely a hypothesis—and ultimately dismissed accounts of causation in metaphysics. On this basis, Langenhert developed an occasionalism ‘without occasions in the external world’. This view is somehow a product of philosophical debates that animated the academic discussions at Leiden.

‘Following No Party But The Truth’: Petrus Van Musschenbroek’s Rhetorical Defence Of (Newtonian) Experimental Philosophy

The Dutch Republic played an important role in the dissemination of Newton’s philosophy. There, it found its earliest proponents, who were instrumental in the spread of Newton’s ideas on the Continent. One of these figures was Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761), who took up professorships at the universities of Duisburg, Utrecht, and Leiden. In a letter to Newton written at the beginning of his academic career, van Musschenbroek explicitly stated that it was his aim to spread the ‘Newtonian philosophy’ in the university, and from there to the rest of Dutch society. In this article, I focus on van Musschenbroek’s activities in the context of his professorship at different universities in the Dutch Republic. I analyse the way van Musschenbroek presents Newton and his philosophy in his academic orations and the prefaces to the different editions of his textbook. I argue that van Musschenbroek implicitly uses a certain view on the institution of the university and its tasks as a leverage in his defence of ‘(Newtonian) experimental philosophy’ and his attack on the existing tradition of Cartesian philosophy in the university. I also show how van Musschenbroek was not consistent in presenting his philosophy as specifically ‘Newtonian’, and increasingly emphasised that he should not be seen as a ‘follower’ of Newton, but rather as an impartial ‘experimental philosopher’. This shift, however, can be seen as motivated by the same rhetorical strategy used by van Musschenbroek in his earlier defence of ‘Newtonian’ experimental philosophy.

Fromondus versus Galileo on Comets

This contribution shows how Aristotelian authors used Aristotelian principles they deemed more fundamental to deny Aristotelian tenets they regarded as secondary. This general point is illustrated by taking as a case study the early seventeenth-century debate on comets. In particular, the discussion focuses on the role played in this debate by the Flemish academician Libertus Fromondus (1587–1653), professor of philosophy and theology at Leuven, and very actively engaged in debating the ‘new’ science with many natural philosophers around Europe, including Descartes and Galileo. Fromondus criticises the Aristotelian account of comets but rejects Galileo’s explanation as well. Fromondus uses some entrenched Aristotelian principles against the Aristotelian conclusion that comets are terrestrial exhalations. For Fromondus, as it was for Tycho Brahe, superlunary comets would count against the solid spheres and for fluid planetary heavens. However, not everyone took the route followed by Fromondus. One might even count Galileo among the traditionalists, or at least among Tycho’s opponents, about comets. The upshot is that Fromondus made significant modifications to his Aristotelianism to accommodate astronomical novelties such as superlunary comets. While he could be thought of as a traditionalist, spending his whole career as an academic, he made changes that went well beyond what could be described as the articulation of the Aristotelian tradition.

Speculative Philosophy at the Berlin Academy

This contribution focuses on the way in which the relationship between the fields of philosophy and science was the object of intense debate at the Berlin Academy. The contribution analyses some key papers in which members of the academy try to determine what they call the ‘academic spirit’. An important source is Maupertuis’s lecture, in which he explains his views, as president, about the division of classes and the advantages of carrying out research in an academy. But there are other important contributions; particularly that of Formey who, as secretary, wrote several papers on these questions, but also of Dieudonné Thiebault, Jakob Wegelin, and Christian Garve. These discussions took place at distinct periods and express different ways of conceiving of the production of academic scholarship. Most importantly, their representation of speculative philosophy changed, to the extent that some believed that this field should no longer be discussed in the context of the academy. Christian Garve maintains this view, which expresses a major change in the history of the institution. This position is also accompanied by a gradual disappearance of speculative reflections.

Methods of Teaching or Discovery? Analysis and Synthesis from Zabarella to Spinoza

This contribution looks directly at the so-called novatores and their own appropriation and reworking of the traditional methodological and pedagogic approaches. It shows how academic approaches and established tradition worked not only as a polemical target but also as a crucial resource that nourished the growth of alternatives to academic and Aristotelian approaches. This point is developed by discussing in detail the problem of method in Spinoza, and by connecting it with its scholastic background. By the mid-seventeenth century proponents of controversial philosophies appropriated more familiar didactic genres to convey their radical doctrines. For instance, the first book of Thomas Hobbes’s De Corpore follows the familiar order of standard Scholastic Aristotelian logic textbooks, and Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics emulates Euclid’s Elements, by presenting astounding conclusions about nature and extension more geometrico. There is a long-standing debate regarding whether Spinoza’s geometrical method is a method of discovery or merely a method of presentation. This contribution examines Spinoza’s reflections on method in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect in the context of contemporaneous conceptions of analysis and synthesis found in the works of Zabarella, Burgersdijk, Descartes, and Hobbes to identify the most plausible readings of his method in the Ethics.

Domesticating Descartes, Renovating Scholasticism

This article studies the academic context in which Cartesianism was absorbed in Germany in the mid-seventeenth century. It focuses on the role of Johann Clauberg (1622-1665), first rector of the new University of Duisburg, in adjusting scholastic tradition to accommodate Descartes’s philosophy, thereby making the latter suitable for teaching in universities. It highlights contextual motivations behind Clauberg’s synthesis of Cartesianism with the existing framework such as a pedagogical interest in Descartes as offering a simpler method, and a systematic concern to disentangle philosophy from theological disputes. These motivations are brought into view by situating Clauberg in the closely-linked contexts of Protestant educational reforms, and debates around the proper relation between philosophy and theology. In this background, it argues that Clauberg nevertheless retains an Aristotelian conception of ontology for purely philosophical reasons, specifically, to give objective foundations to Descartes’s metaphysics of substance. In conclusion, Clauberg should not be assimilated either to Aristotelianism or to Cartesianism or, indeed, to syncretic labels such as ‘Cartesian Scholastic’. Instead, he should be read as transforming both schools by drawing on a variety of elements in order to address issues local to the academic milieu of his time.

Institutioni Scholasticae Minime Accommodata

This contribution reconstructs the controversy between Gerard de Neufville (1590-1648) and Johann Clauberg about the comparative merits of Bacon and Descartes in the university classroom. This controversy had a crucial pragmatic dimension, evaluating the question of how Baconian and Cartesian philosophical projects could meet the pedagogical needs of the university as an educational institution. The exchange between de Neufville and Clauberg shows that textbooks of natural philosophy contain important discussions of pedagogical practice. De Neufville fears that a revolution of natural philosophy along Baconian lines may well take centuries. But professors still need something to teach to students. Therefore, he envisions a Baconian philosophia nov-antiqua that reintroduces certain aspects of Aristotelian science into a broadly Baconian empirical investigation of nature. Clauberg’s criticism of his teacher focuses on two perceived weaknesses. First, Baconian doubt renders natural philosophy unteachable; while Cartesian doubt does not, because it can be dissolved comparatively quickly. Second, de Neufville’s evolutionary approach may inadvertently convey false doctrines to students, thereby preventing their epistemic progress. The only defence against unexamined opinions is the suspension of judgment. Besides that, he argues, de Neufville’s pragmatic worries are unfounded: Cartesians are successful professionals in theology, medicine, and in the university itself.