The ArgumentThis paper focuses on several Italian Jewish philosophers in the second half of the sixteenth century and the first third of the seventeenth century. It argues that their writings share a certain theology of nature. Because of it, the interest of Jews in the study of nature was not a proto-scientific but a hermeneutical activity based on the essential correspondence between God, Torah, and Israel. While the theology of nature analyzed in the paper did not prevent Jews from being (...) informed about and selectively endorsing the first phase of the scientific revolution, it did render the Jews marginal to it. So long as Jewish thinkers adhered to this theology of nature, Jews could not adopt the scientific mentality that presupposed a qualitative distinction between the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. (shrink)

The article provides a compact review of the early modern science views of the nature of science, scientific method and knowledge, rationality and objectivity with respect to masculinity and femininity. Following primarily Galileo and Bacon's work, the author is interested in pointing out the most important ideas of the historically fixed ways of how people imagined the acquisition of knowledge, presented nature, understood the role of researchers, as well as what metaphors they applied in defining knowledge. Due to the vast (...) and diverse material, the aim is not to sketch a complete and detailed portrait of the ideal of modern science, but to explore to what extent gender-related issues were of any significance here. (shrink)

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama absoliutistinės ir reliacionistinės erdvės ir laiko koncepcijų kontroversija. Lyginamos Newtono ir Leibnizo teorijos, pateikiami kitų diskusijoje dalyvavusių filosofų požiūriai. Atskleidžiami abiejų teorijų argumentacijų trūkumai ir privalumai. Straipsniu nesiekiama atstovauti kuriai nors pozicijai, lyginamoji abiejų požiūrių analizė leidžia skaitytojui susidaryti nešališką vertinimą. Teigiama, kad abiejų erdvės ir laiko sampratų prielaidos yra greičiau metafizinės nei fizikinės. Nurodoma, kad klasikinė diskusija yra vis dar aktuali šiuolaikiniame moksliniame kontekste.

This paper offers a caution that emphasis upon the importance of mathematics in recent historiography is in danger of obscuring the historical fact that, for the most part, mathematics was not seen as important in the pre-modern period. The paper proceeds by following a single case study, and in so doing offers the first account of the mathematical writings of Jean Fernel (1497–1558), better known as a leading medical innovator of the 16th century. After establishing Fernel's early commitment to mathematics, (...) and attempt to forge a career as a cosmographer, it goes on to explain his abandonment of mathematics for a career in medicine. The ‘mathematization of the world picture’ is usually explained in terms of the perceived usefulness of mathematics, but Fernel's case shows that for many pre-modern thinkers mathematics was not regarded as a useful pursuit. The paper should serve as a reminder, therefore, that the take-up of mathematics by natural philosophers was by no means inevitable, but had to be carefully managed by early modern mathematical practitioners. The case of Fernel indicates that perhaps he was not the only would-be mathematical practitioner to abandon mathematics in favour of a calling that was more appreciated by contemporaries. (shrink)

The ArugmentThis essay answers a single question: what was Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's curator of experiments, doing in his well-known 1665 work,Micrographia?Hooke was articulating a “universal cure of the mind” capable of bringing about a “reformation in Philosophy,” a change in philosophy's interpretive practices and organization. The work explicated the interpretive and political foundations for a community of optical instrument users coextensive with the struggling Royal Society. Standard observational practices would overcome the problem of using nonstandard instruments, while inherent (...) inrepresentation– the interpretive practice championed in the text – were important theological and political meanings. Hooke's kind of experimental philosophy undermined the claims made by “atheists” and “enthusiasts” – the enemies of the restored church and state – while also producing useful knowledge. Equally important, Hooke modeled the community described inMicrographiaupon the classicalres publica, but his community made important concessions to Restoration political realities, especially the growing role of commercial or transactional relationships. (shrink)

The ArgumentRecent historiography of the Scientific Revolution has challenged the assumption that the achievements of seventeenth-century natural philosophy can easily be described as the ‘mechanization of the world-picture.’ That assumption licensed a story which took mechanization as self-evidently progressive and so in no need of further historical analysis. The clock-work world was triumphant and inevitably so. However, a close examination of one key group of natural philosophers working in England during the 1670s shows that their program necessarily incorporated souls and (...) spirits, attractions and congruities, within both their ontology and their epistemology. Any natural philosophical strategy which excluded spirits and sympathies from its world was condemned as tending to subversion and irreligion. This examination shows that the term ‘mechanical philosophy’ was a category given its meanings within local contexts and carries no universal sense separate from that accomplished by these natural philosophers. It also shows how the experimental praxis was compelled to treat souls and spirits, to produce them through experimental labor, and then to extend these experimentally developed entities throughout the cosmos, both social and natural. The development of mechanical philosophy cannot be used to explain the cognitive and social structure of this program, nor its success: instead, the historical setting of experimental work shows how a philosophy of matter and spirit was deliberately constructed by the end of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

Abordamos aqui a influência do método de Condillac sobre a história da química. Partindo da confessada dívida de Lavoisier com o abade, propomo-nos a avaliar o aporte que o método condillaquiano terá para a filosofia natural da segunda metade do XVIII, colocando-a primeiramente na perspectiva da onda newtoniana que contaminou progressivamente as ciências a partir do fim do XVII. Mostramos então como o método de Newton, via alquimia, é capaz de inserir aspectos alheios ao mecanicismo estrito nas discussões, o que (...) garantirá à química legitimidade para se valer de conceitos como atrações e afinidades. Mais tarde, ao constituir e sistematizar um método geral de conhecimento marcado pelo modelo newtoniano, Condillac legará aos naturalistas meios para ordenar proficuamente novas regiões de conhecimento. Quando adequadamente adaptado por Lavoisier aos problemas químicos, este método promoverá a “revolução” da química, ou seu estabelecimento definitivo como ciência positiva. (shrink)