This paper reconstructs Margaret Cavendish’s theory of the metaphysics of artifacts. It situates her anti-mechanist account of artifactual production and the art-nature distinction against a background of Aristotelian, Scholastic, and mechanist theories. Within this broad context, it considers what Cavendish thinks artisans can actually do, grounding her terminological stipulation that there is no genuine generation in nature in a commitment to natural and artistic production as the mere rearrangement of bodies. Bodies themselves are identified, in a conceptually Ockhamist manner, with (...) their figures, so that the resulting theory of mere rearrangement is Scholastically respectable. The paper also offers literal interpretations, focused narrowly on the philosophical content of her theories of art and artifacts, of her claims that art concerns only “nature’s sporting or playing actions”, that its products are “deformed and defective”, and that they are “at best …mixt or hermaphroditical.". (shrink)

The 16th and 17th centuries marked a period of transition from the vitalistic ontology that had dominated Renaissance natural philosophy to the Early Modern mechanistic paradigm endorsed by, among others, the Cartesians and Newtonians. This paper focuses on how the tensions between vitalism and mechanism played themselves out in the context of 16th and 17th century chemistry and chemical philosophy. The paper argues that, within the fields of chemistry and chemical philosophy, the significant transition that culminated (...) in the 18th century Chemical Revolution was not a transition from vitalism to full-blown mechanism. Rather, chemical philosophy shifted from a vitalistic theory of matter and spirits to a naturalistic, physicalistic, and corpuscularian conception of chemical properties and reactions. Despite being naturalistic, physicalistic, and corpuscularian, however, this theory was not fully mechanistic. Special attention is paid to the contributions made by Paracelsus, Sebastien Basso, Jan Baptista van Helmont, and Robert Boyle to this ontological transition. (shrink)

In this paper we examine titles of early modern German dissertations with regard to their ‘interdiscplinarity’, challenging the established consensus that interdisciplinarity evolved only in the 18th century. Based on the construction and analysis of a co-occurrence network of 909 dissertation titles published in the 17thc entury it can be shown that various dimensions of early modern interdisciplinarity should be distinguished. This concerns dissertations that connect philosophical disciplines to the ‘higher’ faculties of the early modern university (theology, jurisprudence, medicine) (...) as well as titles that connect theoretical and practical subdisciplines of philosophy itself. We also observe that the emerging disciplines of historiography and philology seem to play a prominent role in the emergence of early modern interdisciplinarity. On a structural level it seems to be misguided to construe the early modern system of knowledge as a ‘tree’. It rather seems that relations betweeen disciplines in this period exhibit both tree-like and lattice-like features. (shrink)

Some natural philosophers in the 17th century believed that they could control their own innards, specifically the animal spirits coursing incessantly through brain and nerves, in order to discipline or harness passion, cognition and action under rational guidance. This chapter addresses the mechanisms thought necessary after Eden for controlling the physiology of passion. The tragedy of human embedding in the body, with its cognitive and moral limitations, was paired with a sense of our confinement in sequential time. I (...) use two strands of 17th-century natural philosophy to exemplify forms of the perceived connection between physiology, memory, and the passions. I deal at length with Cartesian mechanism, and more briefly with Restoration natural philosophy in England. These are fruitful historical domains for connecting cognition and culture, since relations of domination, disruption, or accommodation between present and past are in play for both selves and societies. Despite the difficulty of integrating affect with cognition in theories of brain and mind, the capacity to treat passion and memory together is crucial for future cognitive science to address issues which outsiders care about. (shrink)

The idea at the core of the New Mechanical account of explanation can be summarized in the claim that explaining means showing ‘how things work’. This simple motto hints at three basic features of Mechanistic Explanation (ME): ME is an explanation-how, that implies the description of the processes underlying the phenomenon to be explained and of the entities that engage in such processes. These three elements trace a fundamental contrast with the view inherited from Hume and later from strict logical (...) empiricism (see Creath 2017), focused on epistemic and formal features of science and according to which issues concerning the kind of entities and processes that lie within a theory’s domain are extraneous to science and belong instead to ontology or metaphysics. Philosophers belonging to the new mechanical philosophy believe that the received view of scientific explanation (Hempel 2001), pivoting on the notion of law of nature, overshadows this insight. Since its origin in the 17th century, mechanical philosophy aimed to explain natural phenomena by reducing them to mechanisms. Traditional attempts to define the concept of mechanism involved the identification of a limited set of fundamental elements as, for instance, contact action, action at a distance, inertial motion (see e.g. Hesse 2005), and, more recently, transmission of a mark, or of a conserved quantity (see Frisch, this volume). The new mechanical philosophy rejects this austere characterization of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation and aim at providing a novel, philosophically rigorous explication of the concept of mechanism and of its role in scientific explanation and practice. ME has been adopted with profit in philosophy of special sciences (for instance in biomedical sciences, e.g. in the explanation of chemical transmission at synapses ((Machamer, Darden and Craver 2000), MDC henceforth); but also in social sciences, e.g. the three kinds of social mechanisms in Coleman’s analysis of Max Weber’s account of the role of the Protestant ethic in the growth of capitalism (Hedström and Swedberg 1998)), where exceptionless regularities are rarely ever found. In physics, it is generally possible to formulate explanations in law-based form, with the result that the plurality of explanatory forms might be overlooked. This should not come as a surprise, given that physics was the main inspiration for logical empiricists, and, in particular, Newtonian physics was a template for Hempel’s formulation of the covering law model. However, this situation is unfortunate, since, we will argue, knowing how things work is often part of the explanation of physical phenomena. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to the basic features of ME, with specific focus on its application to physics (section 1). The main part of the chapter is devoted to the defence of two theses: on the one hand, some domains of physics are not compatible with mechanistic reasoning and explanation (section 2); on the other hand, a comprehensive account of explanation in physics can’t dispense with ME (section 3). (shrink)

Descartes bequeathed to his successors what he and they thought to be a sharp, deep split between the mental and the material. He thought it was a split between things, with every thing belonging to one of the two kinds and no thing belonging to both. According to him, a human being is a pair, a duo, a mind and a body; or, more strictly, a human being is a mind that is tightly related to an animal body. The exact (...) nature of that relation was one of the problems that Descartes never solved to his own satisfaction, let alone to anyone else’s. Not all of those who took over the split thought that it was a split through things. It was possible to hold - as I am sometimes inclined to - that material properties are radically different from mental properties, neither being reducible to the other, and yet there are single things, not pairs or duos or small committees, that have properties of both kinds. In the language of the 17th century, that is the belief that matter can think, i.e. that an item that bumps and shoves its way through space can also be the subject of thoughts and experiences and perceptions. In that century an impressive amount of intellectual energy went into debating whether matter could think. I’m going to pick out of that debate certain strands that I hope are still of interest today. They certainly interest me. Such understanding as I have of the philosophy of mind - I mean of what is actually true about mentality, not merely of the history of men’s opinions about it - has come from tracking some of the 17th century writers as they beat their way through the undergrowth. I don’t mean that they eventually led me to true conclusions, which I gratefully swallowed. They got most things wrong, I believe; but there is a lot to be learned from working out where they were wrong and why. (shrink)

In the 17th-19th centuries human society formed the understanding of scientific and technological progress as continuous improvement of society and nature on the basis of the growing capacity of scientific knowledge of the world. This belief in continuous scientific and technological progress, absolutisation of a value-free scientific research, illusion of actual «creatability» of the world on the basis of the obtained knowledge resulted in emergence of a scientific religion, based mostly on the belief in the power of scientific knowledge (...) and the progressive character of technological activity, grounded on this knowledge. There appeared an illusion that if technology has made the Man of an animal, then, combined with science, it could make God of the Man, the Creator of not only artefacts but of the matter, nature and life as well. There is no insuperable barrier, neither in experimental physical science nor in engineering, between the Natural and the Artificial (the "second nature" created by human activity). From the Natural point of view, any natural or technical system is regarded as a self-contained object, an organismdeveloping in accordance with its own internal laws, whereas the Artificial point of view considers it a mechanism designed as a result of human activity. The task of philosophy is to open new possible worlds, new understanding of the world, to make them the people’s outlook and then embody them in reality. This fact inevitably influences philosophy of technology that is due to become not only a philosophic study of scientific and technological progress but also a new philosophy of technological sustainable development in the global world. (shrink)

The comparison made by Ada Lovelace in 1843 between the Analytical Engine and the Jacquard loom is one of the well-known analogies between looms and computation machines. Given the fact that weaving – and textile production in general – is one of the oldest cultural techniques in human history, the question arises whether this was the first time that such a parallel was drawn. As this paper will show, centuries before Lovelace’s analogy, such a comparison was made by Gottfried Wilhelm (...) Leibniz. During the 17th century, Leibniz compared his calculating machines with another textile machine, the stocking frame, a machine which mechanized knitting and which was invented in 1589. During the following centuries, this machine was considered as a technological wonder and as a creation of God, and, during the last decades of the 17th century, Leibniz emphasized the need to consider it and other textile machines mathematically. What, then, were the reasons for the parallel drawn between this machine and Leibniz’s automatic computation machines? And what were the consequences of this analogy concerning the artisanal knowledge embedded in manual textile practices? (shrink)

This article deals with the concept of “mechanism” from a historical point of view, focusing on its relationship with the evolution of hylomorphism in the 17th century. I try to address the following questions: is mechanism structurally bound to materialism or does it rather represent a form of complete determinism, reconcilable with an “updated” version of hylomorphism? In the first part of the essay, I make the point that the very notion of “mechanism” must be (...) clarified by means of a distinction between Boylean experimental mechanism and what Daniel Garber has called the “pre-history of the Mechanical Philosophy”. My aim is to highlight how the deterministic (and nominalistic) hylomorphism developed in the 17th Century came quite close to mechanism. In this framework, I present the ‘strange case’ of Marin Cureau de La Chambre (1594-1669), which represents a characteristic compromise – based on the possibility of a not bodily extension – between a deterministic mechanization of the lower functions of the vegetative and sensitive soul and Campanella’s panpsychism. (shrink)

Justus Lipsius was a 16th -century renaissance humanist and literary scholar who, crucially for the history of philosophy, was involved in the publication and reinterpretation of Stoic thought, primarily focusing on the works of Seneca. Despite a fair amount of scholarship on Lipsius’s contribution to the history of philosophy, the role of Stoicism in the early to mid-17th century is still not well understood. In this thesis I show, through close examination of Lipsius’s work, that Neo-Stoic ethics (...) in the 17th century amounts to a view about the relationship between providence and human actions. After identifying ways that Stoic philosophy was used to explain this connection, I derive two key normative duties that are constitutive of a Neo-Stoic account of ethics: 1) a duty to accept the determinations of providence (whatever they may be) and 2) the duty to develop a large body of rational knowledge about the universe. In the remainder of this thesis, I map the influence of these Neo-Stoic positions on Rene Descartes, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Nicolas Malebranche’s moral philosophy. I contend that all these Cartesian-inspired thinkers draw upon the foundational components of Neo-Stoicism in their accounts of ethics. I first consider how the correspondence between Descartes and Elisabeth represents a debate about the viability of certain Neo-Stoic theses. And then, I argue that Malebranche’s moral philosophy should be read as the natural progression of the Neo-Stoic “seeds” planted throughout this correspondence. In developing a conceptual framework for what constitutes a Neo-Stoic position and mapping the influence of this system on prominent Cartesian thinkers, my thesis tells a conceptual story about the history of Stoicism. My thesis particularly seeks to emphasize the way that Stoicism becomes intertwined with the history of 17th century moral philosophy based on the desire of Early Modern figures to balance voluntarist and intellectualist intuitions. (shrink)

Studie pojednává o kritice experimentální vědy v Anglii v 60. a 70. letech 17. století. Text se soustředí na námitky, které proti nové filosofii a vědě pěstované v Royal Society vznesli ve svých dílech Margaret Cavendishová (1623-1673) a Henry Stubbe (1632-1676). Ačkoliv tito autoři kritizovali institucionalizovanou experimentální vědu z různých hledisek, shodovali se v jednom bodě: Cavendishová i Stubbe vyzdvihovali hodnotu, úroveň a relevanci antického vědění ve srovnání s výsledky bádání představitelů Royal Society. Jejich výhrady vůči Royal Society jsou zde (...) systematiky představeny ve třech tematických blocích: epistemologickém, historickém a nábožensko-politickém. Cílem této studie je ukázat, že navzdory prestiži, které se dnes empirická věda těší, nebyla v 17. století nová přírodní filosofie okamžitě a s nadšením přijímána. Zároveň chce doložit, že názory kritiků, které v dnešní době mohou působit bizarně i zpátečnicky, z tehdejšího hlediska dávaly smysl a někdy mohly být i opodstatněné. (shrink)

A key consideration in the selection of these eight titles was the scarcity of the original editions - most have never been reprinted and should therefore supplement existing library holdings of 17th and 18th century British thought. The only title published more recently, Luce's definitive biography of Berkeley, was selected because of its exceptional importance for modern scholarship - here it is included with a new introduction by David Berman.

Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town: ʿAyntāb in the 17th Century. By Hülya Canbakal. The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage, vol. 36. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Pp. xvi + 216. $137, €103.

This dataset documents results and code for the paper "Interdisciplinarity in the 17th Century? A Co-Occurrence Analysis of Early Modern German Dissertation Titles" by Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter, forthcoming in *Synthese*. The data to be processed are contained in four files, derived from a larger dataset related to German dissertations and sourced from the national bibliography of 17th century German prints *VD 17* that will be released at a later date. More information can be found in the file (...) `README.md`. (shrink)

Abstract.The aim of this paper is to examine the work of Tschirnhaus, La Hire and Leibniz on the theory of caustics, a subject whose history is closely linked to geometrical optics. The curves in question were examined by the most eminent mathematicians of the 17th century such as Huygens, Barrow and Newton and were subsequently studied analytically from the time of Tschirnhaus until the 19th century.Leibniz was interested in caustics and the subject probably inspired him in his (...) discovery of the concept of envelopes of lines. (shrink)

In this article I contrast 17th and 18th explanations of hysteria including those of Sydenham and Willis with those given by Plato and pre-modern medicine. I show that beginning in the second decade of the 17th century the locus of the disorder was transferred to the nervous system and it was no longer connected with the womb as in Hippocrates and Galen; hysteria became identified with hypochondria, and was a disease contracted by men as well as women. (...) I discuss the purely mechanical explanation of hysteria given by Robert Boyle who attributed its cause to corporeal ideas as well as overly sensitive disposition of the nervous system. I relate this the mechanical theory of the nervous system prominent in Descartes' writings on physiology. The paper closes with a discussion of the contrast between early modern explanations of hysteria and the nature of man with those of Freud in the early 20th century. (shrink)

이 글은 17세기에 활동한 대구지역 3세대 유학자들의 성리학적 특징을 규명하기 위해 채몽연, 도성유, 서사선을 시론적으로 살펴본 것이다. 이들은 정구와 2세대 유학자인 서사원, 손처눌 등에게 학문적 훈습을 받았으며, 평소 지역의 문풍 쇄신과 후진 양성에 힘쓰다 임병양난 때에는 스승을 따라 의병활동에 참여하는 등 사회적 실천에도 적극적이었다. 이러한 활동은 이들의 학문이 감정의 미발 상태에 이루어지는 정좌구중의 경의지학에 기반하고 있으면서 이학인 장자와 불교까지 포용하는 학문적 유연성을 통한 현실과의 긴장 관계를 유지하는 데에서 비롯되었음을 확인할 수 있었다. 더불어 이는 정구의 회통적 학문, 즉 퇴계학과 남명학을 넘어 (...) 통합의 성격을 더욱 확장하는 계기가 되었다. 여기서는 이러한 보편적 특징이 이 세 인물들에게 어떻게 나타나고 있는지를 그들의 삶에 두드러진 흔적을 중심으로 정리하면서 그 사상적 특징을 구체적으로 해명했다. 이제 여기서 얻은 성과를 기준으로 당대의 인물들을 확대 검토함으로써 논의를 진전시켜나가는 과제가 남아있다. (shrink)

The Système de philosophie by Pierre Sylvain Régis can be considered as the achievement both of the scientific liveliness of the Académie des Sciences in the 17th century and of its fruitful relationship with the Royal Society. Since it aims to shape the new conception of the universe in terms of a system, the Système represents one of the most mature achievements of Cartesian philosophy and it is characterized by an empirical interpretation of Descartes’ thought. The Système therefore (...) reflects two important phenomena occurring in the Europe of the 17th century: the scientific revolution and the proliferation of Academies. In fact, this ambitious work could be undertaken with the support of the Académie des Sciences and the Journal des Sçavants. My paper will analyse the French context by focusing to outline the role which the Académie de France had both in France, as the medium of dissemination of the new philosophy despite censorship, and abroad, in particular through the relationship with the Royal Society in England. I aim to analyse the role of the Journal des Sçavants as a means to share ideas other than by correspondence and as a trait d’union between “rationalist France” and “empiricist England”. I intend to question whether it is possible to establish a connection between the empirical interpretation of French Cartesianism, the consolidation of the Académie de France and the employment of new means of academic communication. The paper will show that the second half of 17th century France represents a remarkable exception to the conventional picture, which states that in 17th century Europe, following the success of a mechanistic interpretation of reality, two philosophical school clashed: rationalism, predominating on the continent, and empiricism, in England. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The main purpose of this research is to comprehend the philosophical principles in the spread and legitimation of the Self-made-man idea in the worldview transformations of the 17th century. _Theoretical basis._ Historical and comparative methods became fundamental ones for the research. The research is based on the creative heritage of R. Descartes, T. Hobbes, J. Locke, as well as the works of modern researchers. _Originality._ The analysis shows that the Self-made-man idea, which originated in the ancient world (...) and gradually spreads in the Christian Middle Ages, gained a powerful impetus in the philosophical and moral-legal metamorphoses of the 17th century. These metamorphoses theoretically substantiated and radically accelerated the transition from mystical to rational, from theocentric to the anthropocentric worldview, and, as a result, to the recognition of the intellectual autonomy of the individuals and the freedom of their own will, the emergence of the construct of natural human rights, the requirements of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience, ultimately, to the principle of reliance on one’s own strength and the individual’s personal responsibility for one’s own destiny. Exactly these ideas in interaction with the ideas of Puritanism became the theoretical basis for the formation of B. Franklin’s views and the corresponding cultural code. _Conclusions._ The philosophy of the 17th century, having laid the principles of a new – subject-centric – metaphysics, as well as the philosophical and legal foundations of liberal ideology, provided philosophical and moral-legal legitimation to the sporadic attempts of man to break out of the triple circle of fatalism, paternalism, and conformity to a rationally founded and the ever-growing orientation of the individual towards active self-determination and self-realization, self-reliance and personal responsibility for their own destiny as key principles of the Self-made-man concept. (shrink)

In the first half of the 17th century, Dutch astronomers rapidly abandoned the practice of astrology. By the second half of the century, no trace of it was left in Dutch academic discourse. This abandonment, in its early stages, does not appear as the result of criticism or skepticism, although such skepticism was certainly known in the Dutch Republic and leading humanist scholars referred to Pico’s arguments against astrological predictions. The astronomers, however, did not really refute astrology, (...) but simply stopped paying attention to it, as other questions (in particular the constitution of the universe) became the focus of their scholarship. The underlying physical view of the world, with its idea of celestial influences, remained in vigor much longer. Even convinced anti-Aristotelians, in explaining the world, tried to account for the effects of the oppositions and conjunctions of planets, and similar elements. It is only with Descartes that the by now widespread skepticism about predictions found expression in a philosophy that denied celestial influence. (shrink)

In this work we survey reports on selected severe storms of the 17th century. Specifically, we investigate a severe storm which was accompanied by a ball lightning phenomenon in Cornwall (UK) in 1640. The “fiery Ball”, which reportedly made a “ter[r]ible sound”, entered the church, broke stones and smashed windows. It made holes in stone walls and injured about 14 people. Furthermore, we report on a 1672 storm in Bedford (UK) that tore down houses, blew down stone walls (...) and uprooted trees. We also examine two severe thunderstorms that tore off roofs and uprooted trees in Oxfordshire (UK) and Blois (F) in 1680. In Oxfordshire, hailstone killed farm animals, and later lightning caused a fire, which damaged houses and burned down barns. In Blois, houses were torn down by the wind, eight parishes were ruined by hail (hailstone were the size of a “man’s fist”). Furthermore, houses were damaged and glass windows were shattered. Based on various primary sources, we discuss the impact of these severe storms on society. Moreover, we briefly discuss how people perceived atmospheric phenomena like storms, tornadoes, and hail. Finally, we discuss selected key issues of investigating historical severe storms. (shrink)

Essays on philosophy and intellectual history, focusing in particular on John Locke.

This book presents an analysis of global legal history in Modern times, questioning the effect of political revolutions since the 17th century on the legal field. Readers will discover a non-linear approach to legal history as this work investigates the ways in which law is created. These chapters look at factors in legal revolution such as the role of agents, the policy of applying and publicising legal norms, codification and the orientations of legal writing, and there is a (...) focus on the publicization of law. The author uses Herbert Hart's schemes to conceive law as a human artefact or convention, being the union between primary rules of obligations and secondary rules conferring powers. Here we learn about those secondary rules and the legal construction of the Modern state, and we question the extent to which codification and law reporting were likely to revolutionize the legal field. These chapters examine the hypothesis of a legal revolution that could have concerned many countries in modern times. To begin with, the book considers the legal aspect of the construction of Modern States in the 17th and 18th centuries. It goes on to examine the consequences of the codification movement as a legal revolution before looking at the so-called "constitutional" revolution, linked with the extension of judicial review in many countries after World War II. Finally, the book enquires into the construction of an EU legal order and international law. In each of these chapters, the author measures the scope of the change, how the secondary rules are concerned, the role of the professional lawyers and what are the characters of the new configuration of the legal field. This book provokes new debates in legal philosophy about the rule of change and will be of particular interest to researchers in the fields of law, theories of law, legal history, philosophy of law and historians more broadly. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of 17th Century Philosophy offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative overview of early-modern philosophy written by an international team of specialists. As with previous Cambridge histories of philosophy the subject is treated by topic and theme, and since history does not come packaged in neat bundles, the subject is also treated with great temporal flexibility, incorporating frequent reference to medieval and Renaissance ideas. The basic structure of the volumes corresponds to the way an educated seventeenth (...) - century European might have organized the domain of philosophy. Thus, the history of science, religious doctrine, and politics feature very prominently. The narrative that unfolds begins with an intellectual world dominated by a synthesis of Aristotelianism and scholastic philosophy, but by the end of the period the mechanistic or "corpuscularian" philosophy has emerged and exerted its full impact on traditional metaphysics, ethics, theology, logic, and epistemology. (shrink)