Longtemps eclipse, Mersenne est cependant un personnage eminemment representatif de la pensee du public instruit de son temps, celle qui quitte la scolastique pour le mecanisme. Mersenne s'illustre comme le secretaire de l'Europe savante, en servant d'intermediaire entre les chercheurs. Depuis le rationalisme cartesien jusqu'au sensualisme de Hobbes, l'eclectisme de Mersenne est plus des plus instructifs. C'est pourquoi la part qu'il a prise dans le grand travail collectif d'ou sortit la philosophie nouvelle meritait d'etre tiree d'un injuste oubli. Robert Lenoble (...) rappelle ainsi que le mecanisme, loin de s'epuiser dans le cartesianisme, jaillit de sources diverses, au confluent desquelles se trouve Mersenne. (shrink)

"The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability.... Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of the (...) Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle’s works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars." --Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

THE pervasive role of causality in the development of Galileo's science has been obscured largely by two factors. Philosophers who address the problem usually exhibit an anti-causal bias traceable to David Hume, and this disposes them to concentrate on passages in Galileo's writings that can be given a positivist interpretation. Historians are likewise selective in their treatment of his texts, for they tend to enforce sharp dichotomies between Galileo's earlier Latin compositions and his treatises in Italian, especially the two dialogues (...) of his later years for which he is justly famous. With this twofold reinforcement from philosophers and historians of science, one might think that the problem of causality in Galileo's science is whether or not the Italian physicist actually reasoned in causal terms such as those explained in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. A large and influential school at the moment would say that this is the question, and that it is best answered in the negative: causal analysis played little or no role in the development of Galileo's science, and certainly less and less in his later years. Indeed, it was his rejection of Aristotle precisely on these grounds that merits for him the title, "Father of Modern Science," the canons of which science are almost diametrically opposite those of the science advocated by Greek peripatetics and medieval scholastics, before the onset of the modern era. (shrink)

Discusses Théophile de Viau and his libertin philosophy.