It is often assumed that in the collapse of the Aristotelian distinction between art and nature that results from the rise of mechanical philosophies in the early modern period, the collapse falls on the side of art. That is, all of the diversity among natures that was explained previously as differences among substantial forms came to be seen simply as differences in arrangements of matter according to laws instituted by the “divine artificer”, God. This paper argues that, for René Descartes, (...) the collapse occurs on both sides. Natures are artefacts of God, and human artefacts, under some conditions, can be classified as natures or, at least, continuous within nature. Drawing on developments across both horticulture and engineering in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as Descartes’ mechanical philosophy, this paper explores challenges to the Aristotelian nature/art distinction. The question then is what, in the advent of this collapse, are human artificers doing when they construct artefacts? Are they replicating God’s powers by creating new natures, or are they doing something else, and if so, what might that be? It is argued that we should view human invention for Descartes not as creating new natures so much as discovering them. These findings have consequences for how we interpret Descartes’ use of the term “nature” in relation to automata and other artefacts produced by human hands. (shrink)

Many physicians, anatomists and natural philosophers engaged in attempts to map the seat of the soul during the so-called Scientific Revolution of the European seventeenth century. The history of these efforts needs to be told in light of the puzzlement bred by today's strides in the neurological sciences. The accounts discussed here, most centrally by Nicolaus Steno, Claude Perrault and Thomas Willis, betray the acknowledgement that a gap remained between observable form, on the one hand, and motor and sensory functions, (...) on the other. Observation yielded information about form, but did not guarantee a constant correlation with presumed function, while the mechanisms of sense and movement did not fit in with accounts of action and cognition whose purpose was to place the connection between active body and willful, conscious soul onto a descriptive rather than metaphysical plane. Teleology was now no longer a helpful tool in the disciplines of anatomy and physiology; the consequences of this are still with us. (shrink)

This paper presents a comprehensive study of Robert Boyle’s writings on seminal principles or seeds. It examines the role of seeds in Boyle’s account of creation, the generation of plants and animals, spontaneous generation, the generation of minerals and disease. By an examination of all of Boyle’s major extant discussions of seeds it is argued that there were discernible changes in Boyle’s views over time. As the years progressed Boyle became more sceptical about the role of seminal principles in the (...) generation of minerals and he came to reject the spontaneous generation of insects and animals from putrefying matter. It is also argued that Boyle’s notion of a generative or ‘plastick’ principle creates a tension within his mechanical philosophy. He appeals to a plastick power in order to explain those phenomena of generation that are beyond the explanatory resources of the corpuscular hypothesis. However, when pressed to explain the nature of this power he either hints, somewhat paradoxically, that it too can be explained mechanically or admits his nescience. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism. Discussing Avicenna, Aquinas, and Buridan, as well as Renaissance psychology, I instead suggest that teleology went through a slow and uneven process of rationalization. As Neoplatonic theology gained influence over Aristotelian natural philosophy, the meaning of animism likewise grew obscure. Boyle, as some historians have shown, exemplifies (...) this uneven process. There is an unresolved tension between his religious convictions and the implicit animism of his empirical practice. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article investigates the reasons behind the disappearance of Francis Glisson's theory of irritability during the eighteenth century. At a time when natural investigations were becoming increasingly polarized between mind and matter in the attempt to save both man's consciousness and the inert nature of theres extensa, Glisson's notion of a natural perception embedded in matter did not satisfy the new science's basic injunction not to superimpose perceptions and appetites on nature. Knowledgeofnature could not be based on knowledgewithinnature, i.e., on (...) the very knowledge that nature has of itself; or – to look at the same question from the point of view of the human mind – man's consciousness could not be seen as participating in forms of natural selfhood. Albrecht Haller played a key role in this story. Through his experiments, Haller thought he had conclusively demonstrated that the response given by nature when irritated did not betray any natural perceptivity, any inner life, anysentiment interiéur. In doing so, he provided a less bewildering theory of irritability for the rising communities of experimental physiology. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo estudiamos el concepto de naturaleza en Leibniz y Boyle y la fundamentación que a partir de dicha noción cada uno ofrece del mecanicismo. De modo más específico, proponemos que De ipsa natura de Leibniz se articula como un debate póstumo con A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature de Boyle, siendo el objetivo inicial del texto leibniziano revisar la concepción boyleana de naturaleza y ofrecer una fundamentación alternativa del mecanicismo que permita introducir una (...) comprensión internalista de las leyes naturales. Palabras Clave: Leibniz, Boyle, naturaleza, mecanicismo, fuerza. (shrink)