The aim of this paper is to examine how much Hume knew about astronomy, in order to understand the reasons for his acceptance of Copernicanism. My contention is that Hume’s positive reception of the Copernican system arises at least from the importance that he gives to three features that he attributes to the Copernican system: beauty, simplicity and uniformity. I also give some evidence that Hume had first-hand knowledge of some sections of Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del (...) mondo tolemaico e copernicano (1632), where the “sole proofs” of the Copernican system are said to be found. (shrink)

In this paper I shall attempt to illustrate the way in which philosophical principles diversify scientific theories. By this I mean that alternative philosophical views may inspire and even form part of the basis of alternative scientific theories of the same phenomena, e.g., gravitation. I shall make no attempt, however, to explain the mode of logical connection between a set of philosophical principles and a correlated scientific theory—a question which I consider extremely difficult and perhaps not even amenable to a (...) unique answer. I shall expound two pairs of conflicting theories concerning the motion of the earth. Although each pair possesses its own intrinsic interest I believe they also illuminate one another in striking ways when placed in juxtaposition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Galileo: For Copemicanism and for the Church. By ANNIBALE FANTOLI. Translated by George V. Coyne, S.J. Studi Galileiani Vol. 3. Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1994. Distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. Pp. xix+ 540. $21.95 (paper). This exhaustive treatment of Galileo and his relationship to the Church was first published in Italian by the Vatican Observatory in 1993 as Vol. 2 (...) of its Studi Galileiani series, bearing the title Galileo: Per il Copemicanesimo e per la Chiesa. So excellent was the study that Father George Coyne, the director of the Vatican Observatory, took it on himself personally to translate the volume into English. Although not a member of the Galileo Commission set up by Pope John Paul II to review the Galileo case, as were Coyne and myself, Fantoli has admirably complemented the work of the Commission and his book surely belongs in the Studi Galileiani collection. A former Jesuit with degrees in mathematics and physics, Fantoli began the book more than twenty-five years ago when he was preparing a course on Galileo at Sophia University in Tokyo. His intention was to show that for Galileo it was never a question of choosing between Copernicanism and the Church, and that the saddest drama of his life was being faced with an injunction that forced him to befor the Church and against Copemicanism. The subtitle of his book proclaims Galileo's true intentions, despite his failure to convince others that this was what his life was all about. A great strength of Fantoli's treatment is its documentation, which abounds in excerpts from Galileo's writings and his correspondence as found in the National Edition of his works and also in citations from new materials that have been uncovered by the Galileo Commission. Thanks to Coyne, all of these texts, many of which were hitherto available only in Latin or Italian, can now be easily accessed in English translation. Another strength of Fantoli's work is that he has kept abreast of Galileo literature over the years and thus is able to offer scholarly critiques of authors whose works exhibit a bias against the Church. Especially welcome are his careful discussions of the positions of earlier writers such as Giorgio de Santillana, Ludovico Geymonat, and Stillman Drake, as well as those of more recent authors, Mario Biagioli, Maurice Finocchiaro, Pietro Redondi, William R. Shea, and Richard S. Westfall. The book is a tour de force and there is little to criticize in it. Unfortunately, however, a typesetting error at its very beginning might create 317 318 BOOK REVIEWS the wrong impression and throw off prospective readers. About six lines of text were omitted at the bottom of page 9. To remedy this the following words should be inserted between the end of page 9 and the beginning of page 10: confused with the Sun) which had heen worked out by Philolaus (about 475 B.C.) within the context of the Pythagorean school.9 In a further modification of this theory the central fire as well as the hypothesis of an anti-earth were done away with, which left the earth at the center of the universe. To offset this addition, the last six lines on the bottom of page 10 should be deleted, for these lines are repeated at the top of page 11. Otherwise, with this change, the exposition reads correctly. The remaining typographical errors are few and in no case do they affect the sense. After a brief introduction in which he presents the astronomical concepts necessary for understanding the details of the Copernican debate, Fantoli divides his treatment into seven chapters. The first two of these are devoted to Galileo's early life and teaching at the Universities of Pisa and Padua, his perfection of the telescope, and the beginnings of the controversies about the earth's motion that were provoked by his telescopic discoveries, The next three chapters then take up the scriptural arguments in detail, Galileo's battle with the Jesuits over the comets of 1618 and his The Assayer of 1623, and his resumption of the Copernican program with the publication of his Dialogue... (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Crime of Galileo A Discourse on Method The Metaphysical Foundations of Physics References and Further Reading.

Between the appearance of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus in 1543 and the works of Kepler and Galileo that appeared in 1609–10, there were probably no more than a dozen converts to physical heliocentrism. Following Westman we take this list to include Rheticus, Maestlin, Rothmann, Kepler, Bruno, Galileo, Digges, Harriot, de Zúńiga, and Stevin, but we include Gemma Frisius and William Gilbert, and omit Thomas Harriot. In this paper we discuss the reasons this tiny group of true Copernicans give for believing that (...) Copernicus, not Ptolemy or Tycho Brahe, was correct. We conclude that the early followers of Copernicus can be divided into two main groups, designated mathematicians and physicists. Two main arguments appear in the works of the former: first, the relationship between the velocity of a planet and its distance from the center of the world; second, the explanation of retrogradations. Early Copernicans differed on the reality of celestial spheres, and several attempted to reconcile heliocentrism with scripture. The mathematicians continued to accept a traditional definition of the scope of astronomy and the methods of science, both issues challenged by Kepler and Galileo. Hence the work of Copernicus set in motion a train of events that led to a decisive epistemological shift, but did not itself represent such a shift. The real revolution is the replacement of the methods and goals of Ptolemaic astronomy and Aristotelian physics with Copernicanism in its modern form, which incorporates the conceptual structure of Kepler and the astronomical evidence of Galileo. (shrink)

(2005). Wonder in the face of scientific revolutions: Adam Smith on Newton's ‘Proof’ of Copernicanism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 697-732. doi: 10.1080/09608780500293042.

The ArgumentOne of the earliest arguments for Copernicanism was a widely accepted fact: that on a horizontal plane a body subject to no external resistance can be set in motion by the smallest of all possible forces. This fact was contrary to Aristotelian physics; but it was a physical argument (by abduction) for the possibility of the Copernican world system. For it would be explained if that system was true or at least possible.Galileo argued: only nonviolent motions can be caused (...) by the smallest of all possible forces; hence resistance-free horizontal motions are nonviolent; this confirms Copernicanism insofar as it designates the rotations of celestial spheres (being resistance-free horizontal motions) as nonviolent.Galileo's argument was compatible with (and supportive of) the specific Copernican version of impetus mechanics; but it was also compatible with a (somewhat qualified) principle of inertia. Thus it promoted decisively the transition from impetus mechanics to classical inertial mechanics. (shrink)

Gott (Nature 363:315–319, 1993) considers the problem of obtaining a probabilistic prediction for the duration of a process, given the observation that the process is currently underway and began a time t ago. He uses a temporal Copernican principle according to which the observation time can be treated as a random variable with uniform probability density. A simple rule follows: with a 95% probability.

This paper argues for an interpretation of Leibniz’s claim that physics requires both mechanical and teleological principles as a view regarding the interpretation of physical theories. Granting that Leibniz’s fundamental ontology remains non-physical, or mentalistic, it argues that teleological principles nevertheless ground a realist commitment about mechanical descriptions of phenomena. The empirical results of the new sciences, according to Leibniz, have genuine truth conditions: there is a fact of the matter about the regularities observed in experience. Taking this stance, however, (...) requires bringing non-empirical reasons to bear upon mechanical causal claims. This paper first evaluates extant interpretations of Leibniz’s thesis that there are two realms in physics as describing parallel, self-sufficient sets of laws. It then examines Leibniz’s use of teleological principles to interpret scientific results in the context of his interventions in debates in seventeenth-century kinematic theory, and in the teaching of Copernicanism. Leibniz’s use of the principle of continuity and the principle of simplicity, for instance, reveal an underlying commitment to the truth-aptness, or approximate truth-aptness, of the new natural sciences. The paper concludes with a brief remark on the relation between metaphysics, theology, and physics in Leibniz. (shrink)

This contribution explores Gilles Personne de Roberval’s 1644 Aristarchi Samii de mundi systemate, partibus, & motibus eiusdem, libellus. I focus on the complex circumstances of publication, the intellectual context of the polemics of Copernicanism within the scientific community, as well as the natural philosophy of the treatise. Roberval’s strategy of publication provides a very sophisticated example of authorship in early modern natural philosophy. The strategy lies at the conflux of certain specific motivations. I contextualize these motivations by accounting for the (...) delicate debates around the motion of the Earth in mid-seventeenth century Europe, the institutional communities of the Collège Royal and Mersenne’s circle, and the disciplinary bounds of Roberval’s professional authority. Weighing in all the elements, I argue that Roberval’s publication is an interesting intellectual game, playing with the notion of ancient authority and humanistic recovery. By this somewhat libertine attitude, Roberval takes a stance in a complicated debate around heliocentrism and the status of hypothetical cosmology. Roberval’s position is supported by his natural philosophical speculations, which I situate in the contemporary debates of the community. Roberval borrows from many philosophers, but he aims at achieving a highly systematic speculative cosmology. One of the functions of this system is to confirm Copernicanism, while maintaining a very pessimistic attitude on the prospects of precise astronomical knowledge and, among others, prognostication issues. (shrink)

The article presents a critical discussion of Annibale Fantoli's book, Galileo: For Copernicanism and for the Church.

The paper considers the Copernicanism of Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) as a central moment of his philosophy of nature, concentrating on his two principal cosmological works, La cena de le ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper), written and published in London in 1584, and the Latin De immenso, published in Frankfurt in 1591. The principal characteristic of Bruno’s reading of Copernicus which is underlined is his physical realism, which was particularly complex due to his extension of the still finite Copernican cosmology to (...) infinite dimensions. The paper shows how Bruno’s use of diagrams was essential in defining the terms of his new infinite, post-Copernican cosmology, which constitutes an essential if much debated link between Copernicus himself and the great astronomers of the early seventeenth century such as Kepler and Galileo. (shrink)

In a recent no-go theorem [Bong et al., Nature Physics (2020)], we proved that the predictions of unitary quantum mechanics for an extended Wigner’s friend scenario are incompatible with any theory satisfying three metaphysical assumptions, the conjunction of which we call “Local Friendliness”: Absoluteness of Observed Events, Locality and No-Superdeterminism. In this paper (based on an invited talk for the QBism jubilee at the 2019 Växjö conference) I discuss the implications of this theorem for QBism, as seen from the point (...) of view of experimental metaphysics. I argue that the key distinction between QBism and realist interpretations of quantum mechanics is best understood in terms of their adherence to different theories of truth: the pragmatist versus the correspondence theories. I argue that a productive pathway to resolve the measurement problem within a pragmatist view involves taking seriously the perspective of quantum betting agents, even those in what I call a “Wigner bubble”. The notion of reality afforded by QBism, I propose, will correspond to the invariant elements of any theory that has pragmatic value to all rational agents—that is, the elements that are invariant upon changes of agent perspectives. The classical notion of ‘event’ is not among those invariants, even when those events are observed by some agent. Neither are quantum states. Nevertheless, I argue that far from solipsism, a personalist view of quantum states is an expression of its precise opposite: Copernicanism. (shrink)

In this contribution, we explore a little-referenced effort of Rheticus in favor of the reception of the astronomy of his teacher Copernicus in the religious circle of his time. This appears in his "Treatise on Sacred Scripture and the Motion of the Earth", a document lost for centuries, and rediscovered by Hooykaas in 1972. Here, we offer an elucidation of the main ideas of Rheticus and suggest – from the comparative study of a concrete case – that he should be (...) considered as a precursor of later similar moves, such as that of Galileo in well-known and better-studied letters. (shrink)

In this essay, I will lay out first in some detail the exegetical principles implicit in Augustine's treatment of an early apparent conflict between Scripture and the findings of “sense or reason.” Then I will analyze Galileo's two major discussions of the issue, first in his Letter to Castelli, and then in his Letter to the Grand Duchess, touching on Foscarini's ill-fated Letter in between. I will turn then to an internal tension that many commentators have perceived within the exegetic (...) principles that Galileo deploys in meeting the theological challenge to Copernicanism. The tension was, broadly speaking, between two rather different strategies for dealing with that challenge. According to the more radical choice, the strategy would be to deny the relevance of Scripture to our knowledge of the natural world. The more conservative strategy would be to allow that the authority of divine revelation extended to passages in Scripture describing features of the natural world but also to admit that where this description clashed with something that could be demonstrated through “sense or reason,” an alternative to the literal, everyday, meaning of the Scripture passage should be sought. This latter proviso would imply that even in this, the most conservative, approach, theology is not being given absolute priority over natural philosophy. (shrink)

This paper offers a reconstruction of the interpretations of Descartes's ideas of place and motion by Dutch Cartesians (Henricus Regius, Johannes de Raey, Johannes Clauberg, and Christoph Wittich). It does so by focusing on the reading of Descartes's Principia philosophiae (1644) offered, in particular, by the dictated commentaries on it. It is shown how such commentaries bring to the light new potential Aristotelian-Scholastic sources of Descartes, and the different ways Dutch Cartesians brought to the fore, also with the help of (...) such sources, the rationale of the Cartesian text: in doing so, they constituted a philosophical school. (shrink)

In the lively discussions on Galileo's laws of motion after the Pisan's death, we observe what might be called a new “Galilean affair.” That is, a trial brought against his new science of motion mainly by French and Italian Jesuits with the substantial adherence of M. Mersenne. This new trail was originated by Gassendi's presentation of Galileo's de motu not simply as a perfectly coherent doctrine, but also as a convincing argument in favor of the truth of Copernicanism.

In the lively discussions on Galileo's laws of motion after the Pisan's death, we observe what might be called a new “Galilean affair.” That is, a trial brought against his new science of motion mainly by French and Italian Jesuits with the substantial adherence of M. Mersenne. This new trail was originated by Gassendi's presentation of Galileo's de motu not simply as a perfectly coherent doctrine, but also as a convincing argument in favor of the truth of Copernicanism.

Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his philosophical works he addressed such delicate issues as the role of Christ as mediator and the distinction, in human beings, between soul and matter. This volume presents new translations of Cause, Principle and Unity, in which he challenges Aristotelian accounts of causality and spells out the implications of Copernicanism for (...) a new theory of an infinite universe, and of two essays on magic, On Magic and A General Account of Bonding, in which he interprets earlier theories about magical events in the light of the unusual powers of natural phenomena. (shrink)

In the last three decades several cosmological principles and styles of reasoning termed 'anthropic' have been introduced into physics research and popular accounts of the universe and human beings' place in it. I discuss the circumstances of 'fine tuning' that have motivated this development, and what is common among the principles. I examine the two primary principles, and find a sharp difference between these 'Weak' and 'Strong' varieties: contrary to the view of the progenitors that all anthropic principles represent a (...) departure from Copernicanism in cosmology, the Weak Anthropic Principle is an instance of Copernicanism. It has close affinities with the step of Copernicus that Immanuel Kant took himself to be imitating in the 'critical' turn that gave rise to the Critique of Pure Reason. I conclude that the fact that a way of going about natural science mentions human beings is not sufficient reason to think that it is a subjective approach; in fact, it may need to mention human beings in order to be objective. (shrink)

La Iglesia ha dado por zanjado el caso Galileo en más de una ocasion. No obstante, la polémica ha continuado. Aquí se argumenta que las distintas iniciativas de la Iglesia respecto al caso Galileo -la revision de la condena dei copernicanismo a partir de 1820; la utilización de los documentos dei dossier inquisitorial de Galileo a partir de 1850 y la polémica suscitada; el caso Paschini (1942-1965); y las conclusiones de Juan Pablo II en 1992-1993- ponen de manifiesto la misma (...) actitud de la Iglesia y la persistencia de los intereses básicos de partida, que hacen muy improbable que el “caso de Galileo”, al margen de los problemas genuinamente históricos, pueda cerrarse.Althoght the Catholic Church has setlled “Galileo’s case” several times, the controverse goes on. I argue that Church’s initatives on this matter -the revision of the condenmation of copernicanism from 1820; the use of documents coming from Galileo’s inquisitorial dossier from 1850 on and the controversy raised by this use; Paschini case (1942-1965); and the conclusions drawn by pope John Paul II in 1992-1993- make evident the identical actitude of the Church as well as the persistence of his basic interests, which make very unlikely that Galileo’s case, regardless of genuine historical problems, call be considered as closed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cocceius and the Jewish CommentatorsAdina M. YoffieThe case of Johannes Cocceius defies the commonplace that Leiden University (and perhaps post-Reformation, confessionalized Europe in general) turned away from humanist scholarship in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In 1650 Cocceius (1603-69), a Bremen-born Oriental philology professor at Franeker, joined the Leiden theological faculty and wrote a treatise, Protheoria de ratione interpretandi sive introductio in philologiam sacram (De ratione). He (...) praised such rabbinic exegetes as Rashi (1040-1105) and David Kimchi (ca. 1160-ca. 1235) in humanist terms for their erudition. At the same time the "new" Cartesian philosophy was taking hold in the arts faculty, and mathematics instruction was encroaching on scholastic formal logic.1 Leiden would become famous for Cartesianism, mathematics, and "Calvinist Copernicanism" in the second half of the seventeenth century, but Cocceius still worked in the tradition of advanced humanist scholarship that had made the institution famous in the sixteenth century.2Leiden's earlier reputation was due in large part to the biblical humanist work of such Renaissance polymaths as Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) and Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), but by Cocceius's time Leiden theologians were subject to greater Church and State control. As Jonathan Israel and Edwin Rabbie have shown, in response to the controversy that surrounded Jacobus Arminius and his stand on predestination, the Synod of Dordrecht (Dort) drafted an anti-Arminian statement in 1619; any professor who did not sign was subject [End Page 383] to exile from the republic in addition to dismissal from his post.3 Innovative theology, exegesis, and philology suffered as professors, fearing State and Church reprisals, turned to "dogmatic humanism." As Henk Jan de Jonge has explained, this meant that "almost all the theologians of seventeenth-century Leiden who concerned themselves with the explanation of the New Testament placed exegesis at the service of dogmatic objectives."4 Unlike his fellow Leiden theologians, Cocceius pursued biblical humanism and Christian Hebraism through the study of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic-and he did so in a unique way. He was not the first to use Jewish commentaries and even Jewish post-biblical literature for the purpose of reconstructing the original Hebrew Bible, but he was innovative in praising rabbinic scholars as fellow humanists and in incorporating their scholarship into his Christological exegesis and philosophy. He did so, furthermore, not as an independent scholar or pastor or even as a professor of Hebrew; but as the holder of a university chair in theology at a confessionalized university in a century hostile to his brand of late humanism.Although he came to Leiden as a theologian, Cocceius had impressive training as an Orientalist. He had studied with the famous scholar Sixtinus Amama (1593-1629) and polished his Hebrew and Aramaic by working with a Jewish tutor from Hamburg.5 While still a student at Franeker, Cocceius wrote a translation and commentary of the Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin. A few years later he began composing commentaries on the Pentateuch, and, by the time he arrived at Leiden, he had completed one lecture, series of lectures, or piece of writing on every book of the Old Testament. These commentaries were based not only on Cocceius's extensive knowledge of Oriental languages but also on his readings of medieval Jewish commentators. These were the same commentators that Cocceius would later praise in chapter eight of the De ratione.These humanist achievements were much at variance with Cocceius's public persona as perhaps the most prominent Dutch Calvinist theologian of the seventeenth century. For approximately 100 years after his death in 1669 a faction of Leiden theologians calling themselves "Cocceians" battled the "Voetians," followers of Gisbertus Voetius, for the soul of the Dutch Church.6 At Leiden he lectured on the Pauline Epistles, a typical subject for a seventeenth-century Calvinist theologian, and he worked on his famous theological tract, the salvation-historical Summa doctrinae de foedere et testamento Dei (1648). Neither the De ratione nor his voluminous biblical commentary (except [End Page 384] for a short treatise on the last six chapters of Deuteronomy) was published in Cocceius's lifetime. His son Johann Heinrich released these and his father's... (shrink)

One purpose of this article is to correct the current false assumption that ordinary language is a self-Contained, Self-Sufficient, Absolute framework. Most of the article is devoted to showing how developments in the physical sciences from copernicanism to relativity theory have affected revisions in our conceptual framework, Imposing new representations of the world on our thought. It is suggested that these developments imply a relational conception of the universe described as "contextualistic realism". The challenge facing philosophers today is to revise (...) ordinary language to accommodate recent developments in physics conveying a radically different conception of the universe than that imposed by ordinary language. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Kant's Statement of the Principle of the Primacy of Practical Reason, and its Role in Kant's Moral Theology The Primacy of Practical Reason in the Broader Sense The Primacy of Practical Reason and the Assumption of Freedom: Their Relation The Primacy of Practical Reason in Relation to the Theological Postulates Kant's Argument in “On the Primacy” Other Texts Kant's Copernicanism and the Concept of Practical Cognition in the Context of the Postulates Influence.

: This paper offers my current view of a joint research project, with Bernard R. Goldstein, that examines Kepler's unification of physics and astronomy. As an organizing theme, I describe the extent to which the work of Kepler led to the appearance of the form of Copernicanism that we accept today. In the half century before Kepler's career began, the understanding of Copernicus and his work was significantly different from the modern one. In successive sections I consider the modern conception (...) of Kepler's contribution to Copernicanism, the most influential sixteenth century view of Copernicus's work and its sequel, Kepler's work from the viewpoint of this tradition, and finally the historical origins of the modern view of Copernicanism. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit Adam Smith’s treatment of Copernicanism and Newtonianism in his essay, “The History of Astronomy” (hereafter: “Astronomy”), in light of a surprisingly ignored context: David Hume. This remark will strike most scholars of Adam Smith as unfounded—David Hume’s philosophy is often invoked as a source of Smith’s approach in the “Astronomy” or as its target. Yet, Hume’s occasional remarks on Copernicanism nor his treatment of the history of science in the History of England (1754-62, but revised (...) throughout Hume’s life) have not been carefully analyzed in light of the “Astronomy.” In the first five sections of this paper I offer a detailed analysis of all of Hume’s remarks on the Copernican system in his oeuvre. I show that David Hume believed that Copernicus achieved a “revolution” in philosophy. Moreover, I argue that Hume increasingly treats Galileo as the hero of the Copernican revolution. In doing so, Hume appears surprisingly blind to the importance of post-Galilean natural philosophy, especially the (dynamical) arguments that Huygens and Newton provided for the rotation of the Earth. In the last section of the paper, I argue that Adam Smith does show appreciation of dynamic views. I show that Smith and the mature Hume agree on the importance of Galileo, even describing his method in strikingly similar language, but that they evaluate the evidence differently in light of two conflicting commitments: i) Hume is committed to the “true philosophy”—-a certain kind of scepticism which Smith does not share; ii) Hume never seems to have assimilated the way Newton changed the evidential standards within science. (shrink)

Thomas S. Kuhn is famous both for his work on the Copernican Revolution and his ‘paradigm’ view of scientific revolutions. But Kuhn later abandoned the notion of paradigm in favour of a more ‘evolutionary’ view of the history of science. Kuhn’s position therefore moved closer to ‘continuity’ models of scientific progress, for instance ‘chain-of-reasoning’ models, originally championed by D. Shapere. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate around Kuhn’s new ‘developmental’ view and to evaluate these competing (...) models with reference to some major innovations in the history of cosmology, from Copernicanism to modern cosmology. This evaluation is made possible through some unexpected overlap between Kuhn’s earlier discontinuity model and various versions of the later continuity models. It is the thesis of this paper that the ‘chain-of-reasoning’ model accounts better for the cosmological evidence than both Kuhn’s early paradigm model and his later developmental view of the history of science. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that constructivism in mathematics faces a dilemma. In particular, I maintain that constructivism is unable to explain (i) the application of mathematics to nature and (ii) the intersubjectivity of mathematics unless (iii) it is conjoined with two theses that reduce it to a form of mathematical Platonism. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first section of the paper, I explain the difference between mathematical constructivism and mathematical Platonism and I outline my argument. (...) In the second, I argue that the best explanation of how mathematics applies to nature for a constructivist is a thesis I call Copernicanism. In the third, I argue that the best explanation of how mathematics can be intersubjective for a constructivist is a thesis I call Ideality. In the fourth, I argue that once constructivism is conjoined with these two theses, it collapses into a form of mathematical Platonism. In the fifth, I confront some objections. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 381-395 [Access article in PDF] Minds, Forms, and Spirits: The Nature of Cartesian Disenchantment Han van Ruler What is Descartes's contribution to Enlightenment? Undoubtedly, Cartesian philosophy added to the conflict between philosophical and theological views which divided intellectual life in the Dutch Republic towards the end of its "Golden Age." 1 Although not everyone was as explicit as Lodewijk Meyer, who (...) said that his theological doubts were inspired by Descartes's philosophical method, Cartesianism along with Copernicanism, Socinianism, and Cocceianism played an important part in the growing skepticism towards the authority of Scripture. 2 Apart from Descartes's general method, however, specific Cartesian ideas encouraged a new view towards nature and towards God's role in governing it. In physics and physiology the new philosophy replaced the image of mind working on matter with the image of a self sufficient mechanism. This new causal metaphor led to a typically Cartesian form of "disenchantment." In this article I argue that on account of their approval of a Cartesian theory of causality, even authors with sincere religious motives came close to accepting radical and nearly Spinozistic ideas. I start with disenchantment in a very literal sense: Balthasar Bekker's denial of the activities of devils, angels, and other spirits. A comparison of Bekker's arguments with those of another Cartesian, Arnold Geulincx will, I hope, bring out the nature and importance of what I shall present as [End Page 381] Descartes's "mechanical reduction" in physics. Finally, I argue that the Cartesian separation of mind and body gave rise to a form of disenchantment that reached far beyond contemporary debates. Devils, Ghosts, and God's Omnipotence Balthasar Bekker's classic book The World Bewitched (1691-93) does not so much deal with the practice of sorcery as with its theory. Bekker offers a wide range of theological and philosophical arguments in order to combat the idea that ghosts, devils, and angels influence natural or historical events. In particular Bekker draws some important conclusions from the philosophy of Descartes. Yet it is immediately clear to the reader that the motives for his critique are religious rather than philosophical. 3 The World Bewitched is not written as a scientific assault on superstition. Bekker, at the time serving as a Calvinist minister in Amsterdam, presents his work as a new and perhaps final phase in the perfection of Christianity. For two centuries it had been a goal of the Protestant Reformation to accentuate God's majesty and to establish the idea of His absolute power over creation. Bekker's World again expresses this idea. His denial that ghosts and devils are active in the world is a logical consequence of the belief that there is no room for demigods in nature. Bekker thus adds a final touch to the project of the Reformation. The World Bewitched will testify to the fact "that I return as much of the honor of His Power and Wisdom to the Almighty, as they took from Him who gave it to the Devil. I ban [the Devil] from the World and I bind him in Hell." 4 Removing devils and spirits from nature, Bekker aims to distinguish superstition from true faith. The battle against superstitious beliefs had formed a characteristic element of Protestant tactics. Dutch Calvinists, for instance, took offense at the continuing practices of blessings and incantations. 5 Bekker wanted to go even further. The Protestantization of Christian dogma could only be completed by making everything in nature's course depend on God's unique power and providence. 6 "Science" in our sense of the word was a subsidiary matter. 7 Still, Bekker saw the new scientific theories of his day as useful allies. In particular it was the new philosophy of Descartes that attracted him. Following Descartes, Bekker reasons "that I think, that I will, [End Page 382] [and] that I understand something," without any part of my body being involved in this type of consciousness. Mind and body in fact have nothing in common: My... (shrink)

Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his philosophical works he addressed such delicate issues as the role of Christ as mediator and the distinction, in human beings, between soul and matter. This volume presents new translations of Cause, Principle and Unity, in which he challenges Aristotelian accounts of causality and spells out the implications of Copernicanism for (...) a new theory of an infinite universe, and of two essays on magic, On Magic and A General Account of Bonding, in which he interprets earlier theories about magical events in the light of the unusual powers of natural phenomena. (shrink)

An entertaining, enlightening, and humorous graphic narrative of the dangerous thinkers who laid the foundation of modern thought This entertaining and enlightening graphic narrative tells the exciting story of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority—sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death—to lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science and help usher in a new world. With masterful storytelling and color illustrations, Heretics! offers a unique introduction to the birth of modern thought in comics form—smart, charming, and often funny. These (...) contentious and controversial philosophers—from Galileo and Descartes to Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Newton—fundamentally changed the way we look at the world, society, and ourselves, overturning everything from the idea that the Earth is the center of the cosmos to the notion that kings have a divine right to rule. More devoted to reason than to faith, these thinkers defended scandalous new views of nature, religion, politics, knowledge, and the human mind. Heretics! tells the story of their ideas, lives, and times in a vivid new way. Crisscrossing Europe as it follows them in their travels and exiles, the narrative describes their meetings and clashes with each other—as well as their confrontations with religious and royal authority. It recounts key moments in the history of modern philosophy, including the burning of Giordano Bruno for heresy, Galileo's house arrest for defending Copernicanism, Descartes's proclaiming cogito ergo sum, Hobbes's vision of the "nasty and brutish" state of nature, and Spinoza's shocking Theological-Political Treatise. A brilliant account of one of the most brilliant periods in philosophy, Heretics! is the story of how a group of brave thinkers used reason and evidence to triumph over the authority of religion, royalty, and antiquity. (shrink)

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio‐economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti‐traditional attitude, which had an anti‐rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands there was (...) no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used.Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well‐known book: The right use of‐world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments. (shrink)

The paper examines Wesley Salmon’s claim that the primary role of plausibility arguments in the history of science is to impose constraints on the prior probability of hypotheses. A detailed look at Copernicanism and Darwinism and, more briefly, Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus reveals a further and arguably more important role of plausibility arguments. It resides in the consideration of likelihoods, which state how likely a given hypothesis makes a given piece of evidence. In each case the likelihoods raise (...) the probability of one of the competing hypotheses and diminish the credibility of its rival, and this may happen either on the basis of ‘old’ or ‘new’ evidence.Keywords: Copernicanism; Darwinism; Atom models; Bayesianism; Likelihoods; Probability arguments. (shrink)

The aim of Galileo’s tidal theory was to show that the tides were produced entirely by the earth’s motion and thereby to demonstrate the physical truth of Copernicanism. However, in the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo did not explain some of the most significant aspects of the theory completely. As a consequence, the way the theory works has long been disputed. Though there exist a number of interpretations in the literature, the most widely accepted are based on (...) ideas that are not explicitly articulated by Galileo in the Dialogue. This essay attempts to understand the way the theory functions in terms of Galilean physics. It is an interpretation of the theory based solely on Galileo’s arguments—and one that reveals it to have had some unrecognized consequences. This interpretation indicates that Galileo’s theory would not have worked in the manner he described in the Dialogue. (shrink)