This work is the first monograph devoted to the interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of chance in Physics II 4-6 and its implications and projections in other treatises, including an original and comprehensive account of the Aristotelian conception of chance, of accidental causality in the realm of nature, and of accidental causality in the realm of human action. One of the main interpretative issues around Aristotle’s discussion of chance is its relation to the four causes and to teleology. In this sense, (...) it is particularly difficult to find the common features which fortune (tyche) and spontaneity (automaton) share. This work, offers such an interpretation of Aristotle’s general concept of chance (i.e. common to fortune and spontaneity), which shows clearly its relation with his theory of causality (Phys. II 3), with teleology, and with the application of this theory to the study of nature. It also shows how fortune and spontaneity can be interpreted consistently with this general characterization of chance, and how the specific differences between them can be accounted for paying attention to the different structures of causality in the realm of nature and in the realm of human action. Regarding the specific concept of spontaneity (automaton), a crux interpretum, the book offers one of the few independent discussions this issue in Aristotelian literature, and proposes a sub-classification in two kinds of spontaneity based on an analysis of Aristotle’s different examples and characterizations: ‘mixed spontaneity’ (which shares some features with fortune), and ‘pure spontaneity’ (which takes place strictly in the realm of nature). These different structures had not been recognized in specialized literature before. The problem of chance has projections into Aristotle’s natural philosophy, as well as into Aristotle’s theory of action and practical philosophy. This ample perspective of Aristotle’s work, and of the different explanatory models and ontological structures therein involved, constitutes an interesting groundwork for future developments in some or many of these realms of investigation. (shrink)

Collapsing buildings, unexpected meetings in the marketplace, monstrous births, encounters with pirates at sea - these and other unforeseen 'accidents' at the turn of the seventeenth century in England acquired unprecedented significance in the early modern philosophical and cultural imagination. Drawing on intellectual history, cultural criticism, and rhetorical theory, this book chronicles the narrative transformation of 'accident' from a philosophical dead end to an astonishing occasion for revelation and wonder in early modern religious life, dramatic practice, and experimental philosophy. Alongside (...) texts by such canonical figures as Shakespeare and Bacon, this study draws on several lesser known authors of sensational news accounts about accidents that occurred around the turn of the seventeenth century. The result is a cultural anatomy of accidents as philosophical problem, theatrical conceit, and spiritual landmark. (shrink)

This perceptive study of John Case, teacher of philosophy at Oxford from the mid-1560s until his death in 1600 and author of expositions of Aristotle which became standard textbooks of the time, focuses on his intellectual and cultural milieu and reveals.

Four propositions relative to the laws of nature in the classical period must be noted. 1. Certain regularities in phenomena had been discovered. 2. A concept of law had emerged. 3. Classical science is characterized by the introduction of the notion of the legality of nature. 4. New uses of the word «law» had appeared in scientific texts. This article is devoted to the analysis of only this last proposition, that is to say to a terminological problem. First we will (...) describe the semantic uses of the word «law» that may have contributed to the constitution of its classical meaning: its specific usage, disciplinary usage, usage in physics, in mathematics, in metaphysics. Second we will analyze the various moments of the diffusion of the word in the sciences in the xviith century. The general thesis defended in the end is that if the term «law» had indeed been used in science with no reference to a law-giving God prior to the xviith century, only this reference, that is, the coming together of its physical and its metaphysical usage, allowed its generalization in the period between the xviith and xviiith centuries. (shrink)

'During the course of the seventeenth century, within the scholastic tradition itself, commentaries on Aristotle's natural philosophical works increasingly gave way to textbooks and compendia organized along thematic lines' (Dear 1985, 161).

The present essay analyzes an eighteenth-century phase of the querelle des monstres and highlights two main points. 1) As the cases of Lémery and Winslow demonstrate, in the period when preformation was the dominant view, the dispute over the origin of monsters carried into the very field of preformation the contrast which had originally opposed it to the now defeated model of epigenesis, namely the alternative between mechanical genesis and pre-existence of the monstrous form itself. 2) One of the most (...) important episodes in the shift of teratology from a primarily theological or metaphysical issue to a purely natural one was due to Albrecht von Haller. Haller shifted the dispute from anatomy to embryology; and it is on an embryological base and not on metaphysics that he built his own demonstration of the original nature of the monster. He was furthermore the only scientist of authority who dealt with teratology from an epigenetic standpoint. His numerous changes of view in the field of embryology did in fact never affect his early adherence to the thesis of original monstrosity. (shrink)

This article sets out to investigate aspects of the uptake of Renaissance law and medicine from some of the logical and natural-philosophical components of the university arts course. Medicine is shown to have a much laxer operative logic than law, reflecting its commitment to the theory of idiosyncrasy as opposed to the demands made upon the law by the need for a uniform application of justice. Symptomatic of the different uptake arc the contrasting meanings of "regulariter" and "generaliter" in the (...) two disciplines. Whereas the law treats the rule as inviolable and the exception as only valid if made explicit in due legal form, medicine is able to conceive of a nature as a field of knowledge broader than that encompassed by its rules of art. Both law and medicine approach evidence. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to the crucial importance of a new kind of precisely defined law of nature in the Scientific Revolution. All explanations in the mechanical philosophy depend upon the interactions of moving material particles; the laws of nature stipulate precisely how these interact; therefore, such explanations rely on the laws of nature. While this is obvious, the radically innovatory nature of these laws is not fully acknowledged in the historical literature. Indeed, a number of scholars have tried to (...) locate the origins of such laws in the medieval period. In the first part of this paper these claims are critically examined, and found at best to reveal important aspects of the background to the later idea, which could be drawn upon for legitimating purposes by the mechanical philosophers. The second part of the paper argues that the modern concept of laws of nature originates in René Descartes's work. It is shown that Descartes took his concept of laws of nature from the mathematical tradition, but recognized that he could not export it to the domain of physico-mathematics, to play a causal role, unless he could show that these laws were underwritten by God. It is argued that this is why, at an early stage of his philosophical development, Descartes had to turn to metaphysics. (shrink)

The Renaissance has long been recognized as a brilliant moment in the development of Western civilization. Little attention has been devoted, however, to the distinct contribution of philosophy to Renaissance culture. This volume introduces the reader to the philosophy written, read, taught, and debated during the period traditionally credited with the "revival of learning." Beginning with original sources still largely inaccessible to most readers, and drawing on a wide range of secondary studies, the author examines the relation of Renaissance philosophy (...) to humanism and the universities, the impact of rediscovered ancient sources, the recovery of Plato and the Neoplatonists, and the evolving ascendancy of Aristotle. Renaissance Philosophy also explores the original contributions of major figures including Bruni, Valla, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Pomponazzi, Machiavelli, More, Vitoria, Montaigne, Bruno, and Camapanella. (shrink)

This is a major work by Ian Maclean exploring the foundations of learning in the Renaissance. Logic, Signs and Nature offers a profoundly learned, compelling and original account of the range of what was thinkable and knowable by learned medics of the period c.1530-1630. This is a study of great significance to the history of medicine, as well as the history of European ideas in general.

Available for the first time in English, Roger's masterwork of intellectual history situates the life sciences within the larger context of French Enlightenment thought and the history of institutions.

DIVA study of monstrosity and baroque poetics in the cultural context of 17-century Italy./div.

Wonders and the Order of Nature is about the ways in which European naturalists from the High Middle Ages through the Enlightenment used wonder and wonders, the passion and its objects, to envision themselves and the natural world. Monsters, gems that shone in the dark, petrifying springs, celestial apparitions---these were the marvels that adorned romances, puzzled philosophers, lured collectors, and frightened the devout. Drawing on the histories of art, science, philosophy, and literature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explore and explain (...) how wonder and wonders fortified princely power, rewove the texture of scientific experience, and shaped the sensibility of intellectuals. This is a history of the passions of inquiry, of how wonder sometimes inflamed, sometimes dampened curiosity about nature’s best-kept secrets. Refracted through the prism of wonders, the order of nature splinters into a spectrum of orders, a tour of possible worlds. Frontmatter Preface, page 9 Introduction: At the Limit, page 13 I THE TOPOGRAPHY OF WONDER, page 21 II THE PROPERTIES OF THINGS, page 67 III WONDER AMONG THE PHILOSOPHERS, page 109 IV MARVELOUS PARTICULARS, page 135 V MONSTERS: A CASE STUDY, page 173 VI STRANGE FACTS, page 215 VII WONDERS OF ART, WONDERS OF NATURE, page 255 VIII THE PASSIONS OF INQUIRY, page 303 IX THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE ANTI-MARVELOUS, page 329 Epilogue, page 365 Photo Credits, page 369 Notes, page 373 Bibliography, page 451 Index, page 499. (shrink)

Ramism was the most controversial pedagogical movement to sweep through the Protestant world in the latter sixteenth century. This book, the first contextualized study of this rich tradition, has wide-ranging implications for the intellectual, cultural, and social histories not only of the Holy Roman Empire but also of the entire Protestant world in the crucial decades immediately preceding the advent of the "new philosophy" in the mid-seventeenth century.

Michael Hunter has done more than any single person since Thomas Birch to make the study of Robert Boyle convenient and enjoyable, and here, ably assisted by Edward B. Davis, he has put us all further in his debt with a compact and readable edition of the philosophically important Free Enquiry into the Notion of Nature.

Gaza's translation was dedicated to Pope Sixtus IV, his influential re-ordering of the books of Historia Animalium was unwarranted, and our chapter divisions go back to his 1476 editio princeps.