The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, 2013 Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science Series, Vol. 300

Drawing the border between the old Aristotelianism and the « new » mechanical philosophy faces historians with a delicate task, if not an impossible mission. There were many natural philosophers who actually crossed the border between the two worlds, and, inside each of these worlds, there was a vast spectrum of doctrines, arguments and intellectual practices. The expression mechanical philosophy is burdened with ambiguities. It may refer to at least three different enterprises: a description of nature in mathematical terms; the comparison of natural phenomena to existing or imaginary machines; the use in natural philosophy of mechanical analogies, i.e. analogies conceived in terms of matter and motion alone.However mechanical philosophy is defined, its ambition was greater than its real successes. There were few mathematisations of phenomena. The machines of mechanical philosophers were not only imaginary, but had little to do with the machines of mecanicians. In most of the natural sciences, analogies in terms of matter and motion alone failed to provide satisfactory accounts of phenomena.By the same authors: Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 254).

Preface.- List of Contributors.-

Introduction

Daniel Garber and Sophie Roux.-

1. The Construction of Historical Categories

Remarks on the Pre-History of the Mechanical Philosophy

Daniel Garber.- How Bacon Became Baconian

Guido Giglioni.-

An Empire Divided: French Natural Philosophy (1670–1690)

Sophie Roux.-

2. Matter, Motion, Physics and Mathematics

Matter and Form in Sixteenth-Century Spain: Some Case Studies

Victor Navarro Brotons.-

The Isomorphism of Space, Time and Matter in Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy

Carla Rita Palmerino.-

Beeckman, Descartes and Physico-mathematics

Frédéric de Buzon.-

Between Mathematics and Experimental Philosophy: Hydrostatics in Scotland about 1700

Antoni Malet.-

3. Mechanical Philosophy Applied

From a Metaphysical to a Scientific Object: Mechanizing Light in Galilean Science

Susana Gómez.-

Causation in Descartes’ Les Météores and Late Renaissance Aristotelian Meteorology

Craig Martin.-

Descartes’ Healthy Machines and the Human Exception

Gideon Manning.-

Mechanism and Surgery: Dionis' Anatomy (1690)

Jacques Lambert.-

Du Clos and the Mechanization of Chemical Philosophy

Rémi Franckowiak.-

Bibliography.- Author Index.

Clarifies the historical negotiations through which the opposition between “Aristotelian philosophy” and “mechanical philosophy,” or between the “old philosophy” and the “new philosophy” were constructed

This collection defends and illustrates a certain way of writing the history of the mechanization of natural philosophy

Key questions are addressed in this volume.