Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science PDF full book. Access full book title Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science by Pietro Daniel Omodeo. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319673785
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume considers contingency as a historical category resulting from the combination of various intellectual elements – epistemological, philosophical, material, as well as theological and, broadly speaking, intellectual. With contributions ranging from fields as diverse as the histories of physics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, mechanics, physiology, and natural philosophy, it explores the transformation of the notion of contingency across the late-medieval, Renaissance, and the early modern period. Underpinned by a necessitated vision of nature, seventeenth century mechanism widely identified apparent natural irregularities with the epistemological limits of a certain explanatory framework. However, this picture was preceded by, and in fact emerged from, a widespread characterization of contingency as an ontological trait of nature, typical of late-Scholastic and Renaissance science. On these bases, this volume shows how epistemological categories, which are preconditions of knowledge as “historically-situated a priori” and, seemingly, self-evident, are ultimately rooted in time. Contingency is intrinsic to scientific practice. Whether observing the behaviour of a photon, diagnosing a patient, or calculating the orbit of a distant planet, scientists face the unavoidable challenge of dealing with data that differ from their models and expectations. However, epistemological categories are not fixed in time. Indeed, there is something fundamentally different in the way an Aristotelian natural philosopher defined a wonder or a “monstrous” birth as “contingent”, a modern scientist defines the unexpected result of an experiment, and a quantum physicist the behavior of a photon. Although to each inquirer these instances appeared self-evidently contingent, each also employs the concept differently.
Author: Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319673785
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume considers contingency as a historical category resulting from the combination of various intellectual elements – epistemological, philosophical, material, as well as theological and, broadly speaking, intellectual. With contributions ranging from fields as diverse as the histories of physics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, mechanics, physiology, and natural philosophy, it explores the transformation of the notion of contingency across the late-medieval, Renaissance, and the early modern period. Underpinned by a necessitated vision of nature, seventeenth century mechanism widely identified apparent natural irregularities with the epistemological limits of a certain explanatory framework. However, this picture was preceded by, and in fact emerged from, a widespread characterization of contingency as an ontological trait of nature, typical of late-Scholastic and Renaissance science. On these bases, this volume shows how epistemological categories, which are preconditions of knowledge as “historically-situated a priori” and, seemingly, self-evident, are ultimately rooted in time. Contingency is intrinsic to scientific practice. Whether observing the behaviour of a photon, diagnosing a patient, or calculating the orbit of a distant planet, scientists face the unavoidable challenge of dealing with data that differ from their models and expectations. However, epistemological categories are not fixed in time. Indeed, there is something fundamentally different in the way an Aristotelian natural philosopher defined a wonder or a “monstrous” birth as “contingent”, a modern scientist defines the unexpected result of an experiment, and a quantum physicist the behavior of a photon. Although to each inquirer these instances appeared self-evidently contingent, each also employs the concept differently.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783319673776
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 341
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume considers contingency as a historical category resulting from the combination of various intellectual elements - epistemological, philosophical, material, as well as theological and, broadly speaking, intellectual. With contributions ranging from fields as diverse as the histories of physics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, mechanics, physiology, and natural philosophy, it explores the transformation of the notion of contingency across the late-medieval, Renaissance, and the early modern period. Underpinned by a necessitated vision of nature, seventeenth century mechanism widely identified apparent natural irregularities with the epistemological limits of a certain explanatory framework. However, this picture was preceded by, and in fact emerged from, a widespread characterization of contingency as an ontological trait of nature, typical of late-Scholastic and Renaissance science. On these bases, this volume shows how epistemological categories, which are preconditions of knowledge as "historically-situated a priori" and, seemingly, self-evident, are ultimately rooted in time. Contingency is intrinsic to scientific practice. Whether observing the behaviour of a photon, diagnosing a patient, or calculating the orbit of a distant planet, scientists face the unavoidable challenge of dealing with data that differ from their models and expectations. However, epistemological categories are not fixed in time. Indeed, there is something fundamentally different in the way an Aristotelian natural philosopher defined a wonder or a "monstrous" birth as "contingent", a modern scientist defines the unexpected result of an experiment, and a quantum physicist the behavior of a photon. Although to each inquirer these instances appeared self-evidently contingent, each also employs the concept differently.
Author: Craig Martin
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421413175
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Get Book Here
Book Description
How new thinking about history, evidence, and scientific authority depended on undermining the authority of Aristotelianism. “The belief that Aristotle’s philosophy is incompatible with Christianity is hardly controversial today,” writes Craig Martin. Yet “for centuries, Christian culture embraced Aristotelian thought as its own, reconciling his philosophy with theology and church doctrine. The image of Aristotle as source of religious truth withered in the seventeenth century, the same century in which he ceased being an authority for natural philosophy.” In this fresh study of the complicated origins of revolutionary science in the age of Bacon, Hobbes, and Boyle, Martin traces one of the most important developments in Western European history: the rise and fall of Aristotelianism from the eleventh to the eighteenth century. Medieval theologians reconciled Aristotelian natural philosophy with Christian dogma in a synthesis that dominated religious thought for centuries. This synthesis unraveled in the seventeenth century contemporaneously with the emergence of the new natural philosophies of the scientific revolution. Important figures of seventeenth-century thought strove to show that the medieval appropriation of Aristotle defied the historical record that pointed to an impious figure of dubious morality. While numerous scholars have written on the seventeenth-century downfall of Aristotelianism, almost all of those works have examined how the conceptual content of the new sciences—such as the heliocentric cosmology, atomism, mechanical and mathematical models, and experimentalism—were used to dismiss the views of Aristotle. Subverting Aristotle is the first to focus on the religious polemics accompanying the scientific controversies that led to the eventual demise of Aristotelian natural philosophy. Martin’s thesis draws extensively on primary source material from England, France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. It alters present perceptions not only of the scientific revolution but also of the role of Renaissance humanism in the forging of modernity.
Author: Delphine Bellis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315521717
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 502
Get Book Here
Book Description
Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) was a major figure in seventeenth-century philosophy and science and his works contributed to shaping Western intellectual identity. Among “new philosophers,” he was considered Descartes’s main rival, and he belonged to the first rank of those attempting to carve out an alternative to Aristotelian philosophy. In his writings, he promoted a revival of atomism and Epicureanism within a Christian framework, and advocated an empiricist and probabilistic epistemology which was to have a major impact on later thinkers such as Locke and Newton. He is moreover important for his astronomical work, for his defense of Galileo’s mechanics and cosmology, and for his activity as a biographer. Given the importance of Gassendi for the history of science and philosophy, it is surprising to see that he has been largely ignored in the Anglophone world. This collection of essays constitutes the first book on Gassendi in the English language that covers his biography, bibliography, and all aspects of his work. The book is divided into three parts. Part I offers a reconstruction of the genesis of Gassendi’s Epicurean project, an overview of his biography, and analyses of Gassendi’s early attacks on Aristotle, of his advocacy of Epicurean philosophy, and his relation to the skeptical tradition and to Cicero’s thought. Part II addresses Gassendi as a participant in seventeenth-century philosophical and scientific debates, focusing especially on his controversies with Descartes and Fludd. Part III explores Gassendi’s contributions to logic, theories of space and time, mechanics, astronomy, cosmology, and the study of living beings, and presents the reception of Gassendi’s thought in England. This book is an essential resource for scholars and upper-level students of early modern philosophy, intellectual history, and the history of science who want to get acquainted with Pierre Gassendi as a major philosopher and intellectual figure of the early modern period.
Author: Francesco G. Sacco
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030444511
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Get Book Here
Book Description
This original work contains the first detailed account of the natural philosophy of Robert Hooke (1635-1703), leading figure of the early Royal Society. From celestial mechanics to microscopy, from optics to geology and biology, Hooke’s contributions to the Scientific Revolution proved decisive. Focusing separately on partial aspects of Hooke’s works, scholars have hitherto failed to see the unifying idea of the natural philosophy underlying them. Some of his unpublished papers have passed almost unnoticed. Hooke pursued the foundation of a real, mechanical and experimental philosophy, and this book is an attempt to reconstruct it. The book includes a selection of Hooke's unpublished papers. Readers will discover a study of the new science through the works of one of the most known protagonists. Challenging the current views on the scientific life of restoration England, this book sheds new light on the circulation of Baconian ideals and the mechanical philosophy in the early Royal Society. This book is a must-read to anybody interested in Hooke, early modern science or Restoration history.
Author: Corey Barnes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040113192
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book examines scholastic conceptions of final causality through the methods and concerns of historical theology. It argues the history of final causality is most profitably understood according to the interplay of regularity, order, and intentionality as interpretive categories. Within this analytic framework, the author explores the history and theological implications of final causality from Aristotle to Nicole Oresme, utilizing shifts in the dominant interpretive category to clarify how final causality could change from one of four co-equal explanatory strategies in Aristotle to the cause of causes in Avicenna to a merely metaphorical cause in Walter Chatton. Theological debates – ranging from questions of creation, the relationship of primary and secondary causality and of the ultimate good to secondary goods, the autonomy or instrumentality of nature, and the compatibility of chance with providence – motivated many of these changes. The chapters examine final causality in Aristotle and the commentorial tradition from late antiquity to medieval Arabic sources and then consider in detail various scholastic understandings and uses of final causality. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of historical theology, systematic theology, scholastic thought, and medieval philosophy.
Author: Antonia LoLordo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139460854
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 21
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science.
Author: Bruce Scofield
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1644116200
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 461
Get Book Here
Book Description
An in-depth examination of how astrology is a form of systems science • Shares modern biological studies offering evidence that our solar system neighbors profoundly affect and shape life on our planet • Explores the early practice of astrometeorology, revealing the links between the solar system, weather, and climate over large spans of time • Looks at the history, philosophy, and methodologies of astrology, as well as its potential future applications in medicine and the social sciences Our ancient ancestors recorded the rhythms of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars, correlating these rhythms with weather, plant growth, and animal and human behaviors. From these early geocosmic recordings were born calendars, astronomy, and astrology. While astrology is now mostly viewed as subjective fortune-telling, Bruce Scofield argues that astrology is not only a practice but also a science, specifically a form of systems science--a set of techniques for mapping and analyzing self-organizing systems. Providing clear evidence that our solar system neighbors profoundly affect and shape life on our planet, Scofield shares modern biological and climatological studies on the effects of Earth’s rotation, the Sun, the Moon, and the rhythms of light, gravity, magnetism, and solar radiation on terrestrial processes. He explores the early practice of astrometeorology, a method of weather forecasting used from ancient times into the Renaissance, revealing the links between the solar system, weather, and climate over large spans of time. He shares his own studies on the correlations between Saturn’s position and terrestrial weather as well as presenting a wealth of evidence on astrological effects and the theories and mechanics behind them. Examining the history of astrology, he looks at its earliest foundations in Mesopotamia and its development by the classical Greeks into a mathematically informed body of knowledge. He explores the decline and marginalization of astrology during the Scientific Revolution of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, when astrology was transformed from a credible science to a controversial practice after being attacked by the Church and then abandoned by experimental scientists. Presenting a broad look at how the cosmic environment shapes nature, the author shows how the practice and natural science of astrology can expand its applications in modern society in such varied fields as medicine, history, and sociology.
Author: Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031019644
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume is a study of the many dimensions of the early reception of Cartesianism in German-speaking Europe during the seventeenth century based on the case of the University of Frankfurt an der Oder. It investigates the broad context of that discussion, which was at once scientific, cultural, political and socio-institutional. Chapter by chapter, the book sheds light on the most relevant aspects of the environment of the time. It is aimed at historians of science and philosophy, as well as scholars investigating German-speaking Europe of the 17th century.
Author: Travis Zadeh
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674258452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Get Book Here
Book Description
Travis Zadeh revives the work of the thirteenth-century Persian scholar Qazwīnī, whose Wonders and Rarities was for centuries one of the most influential natural histories in the world. Inviting us to embrace anew Qazwīnī’s rationalized study of nature and magic, Zadeh dramatically revises the place of wonder in the history of Islamic thought.
