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Introduction
Full text linkContingency 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.
This introduction presents 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 and the early modern period. Undepinned by a necessitated vision of nature, seventeenth century mechanism widely identified apprarent 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, through representing preconditions of knowledge as “historically-situated a priori” and, seemingly, self-evident, are ultimately rooted in time
Conatus
Full text link“Conatus” is a Latin word that is often translated as “endeavor” and “striving” and, by some authors, taken as a synonym of “tendency.” Deriving from a concept discontinuously used within late-scholastic theory of gravitation, the conatus acquired relevance in the thoughts of early modern philosophers such as Descartes, Hobbes, Huygens, Spinoza, and Leibniz and in fields as diverse as physics, optics, physiology, theories of animal locomotion, metaphysics, and ethics. Though these authors meant quite different things when they wrote about the conatus (such that it is hard to provide a comprehensive definition of it), the concept appears to be connected, in very general terms, to the way early modern philosophers tried to account for the behavioral tendencies of bodies
Who was the Founder of Empiricism After All? Gassendi and the ‘Logic’ of Bacon
Full text linkContentions about the origin of early modern empiricism have been floating about at least since the 1980s, where its exclusive “Britishness” was initially question, and the name of Gassendi was provocatively put forward as the putative “founder” of the current to the detriment of Francis Bacon. Recent scholarship has shown that early modern empiricism did not derive from philosophical speculation exclusively but had multiple sources and “foundations.” Yet, from a historical viewpoint, the question whether Bacon’s method had any influence on the origin and development of Gassendi’s version of empiricism still carries significance, for its answer may open up different views on how the relation between British and “continental” empiricisms shall be framed. In this paper, I deal with Gassendi’s reception of Bacon. On the basis of a deep examination of Gassendi’s corpus, I contend that there is no trace of [End Page 327] a consistent influence of Bacon on Gassendi’s empiricism before 1650s; although I show that an indirect influence can be found through the mediation of Peiresc, I put forward the hypothesis that it was more the empirical attitude characterizing Peiresc’s intellectual figure, rather than his interest in Baconianism, to be relevant, along with Epicurus’ philosophy, for Gassendi’s early empiricism. I then analyze Gassendi’s treatment of Bacon’s logic in Gassendi’s Syntagma philosophicum. I show that despite Gassendi’s sympathy for Bacon’s project, his own logic lays on fundamentally different assumptions. Despite this, I argue for Gassendi’s reception of Bacon’s theory of the idols in Syntagma philosophicum. On this basis, I conclude by restating the untenability of “national” accounts of the rise of empiricism, and the importance of highlighting instead the sharing of ideas between its actors
Elements, Renaissance Theory of Natural
No full textFor centuries, the conception of natural elements
in the Western world was dominated
by Aristotle’s four elements-theory. In addition
of being part of university curricula, such theory
scaffolded the alchemical conception of
matter. Starting from the seventeenth century,
mechanical philosophers claimed that different
material qualities were due to quantitative differences
among their components. This new
understanding of matter – also informed by
the revival of classic atomism – paved the
way to the emergence of chemistry
Montanari, Geminiano
No full textGeminiano Montanari was an Italian mathematician and astronomer. He is mostly remembered for the discovery of the star Algol of the constellation of Perseus and his cometary observation of 1667, also quoted by Newton. Trained as a lawyer in Florence, he then devoted himself to the study of physics and mathematics. He started his career as an astronomical observer at the observatory of Panzano. From 1664 on, he held the professorship of mathematics in Bologna and then of astronomy and meteorology in Padua. He wrote on diverse topics, ranging from ballistics, hydraulics, astronomy, and monetary theory. Recent scholarship has also emphasized is epistemological reflections on the experimental method as an example of theorization of the experimental practice in continental Europe
Mazzoni, Jacopo
No full textJacopo Mazzoni was an Italian philosopher, humanist, and astronomer. He held the chair of philosophy in Macerata, Pisa, Rome, Ferrara, and Venice. He is mostly remembered for his defense of Dante Alighieri (Della difesa della Comedia di Dante, Cesena, 1587), which was the occasion to expound his reflection on poetics and aesthetics. Mainly inspired by Aristotle and Plato, his philosophy is motivated by a conciliatory project. He also authored a comparative study on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, defending Aristotelian geocentrism (In universam Platonis et Aristotelis philosophiam preludia, Venice, 1597). Upon the publication of this work, he exchanged letters with Galileo Galilei, whom he had met during his appointment in Pisa. Galileo’s letter to Mazzoni of May 30, 1597 represents the earliest attestation of Galileo’s engagement with Copernicanism
Arguing about the Stars on the Southern Side of the Confessional Divide
Full text linkArguing about the stars has rarely been more controversial and dangerous than in the
early modern period in Europe, especially in Catholic countries, in a time when old
and novel conceptions of the heavens, planetary models and theories of celestial motions
and influences were intensely debated, revised and scrutinized for philosophical soundness
and religious conformity.1 In the hundred years or so that witnessed the birth and
censorship of the Copernican theory; the execution in Rome of the most passionate
defender of post-Copernican cosmology, Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), and the rise and
fall of Galileo Galilei’s (1564–1642) fame linked to his novel interpretation of the book
of nature, the Catholic Church created some of the most powerful instruments of cultural
control and educational conformity ever seen: the Inquisition, the Index of Forbidden
Books and the vast network of Jesuit schools that spread from Rome and the Iberian peninsula
across the globe
The Transformation of Final Causation. Telesio's Theories of Self-Preservation and Motion
Full text linkThis paper focuses on a notion that is strictly connected to that of sentient highlighted, as seen, by Giglioni as the more original trait of Telesio’s philosophy – that of self-preservation. In the De rerum natura iuxta propria principia, Telesio argues for the existence of two antithetical active principles, heat and cold, in turn corresponding to the Sun and heaven, and the earth respectively, and yielding motion and change, and rest and immutability. Heath and cold, rather than actively producing the matter on which they act, are the principles of its change, while the “mass or body” (moles vero corpus) on which the two active natures acts remain, though changing their natures and forms (I, 5, 17). Telesio conferred a crucial role to self-preservation, arguing that both principles are essentially antithetical and act tend to fight each other and seek their own preservation.
The aim of this paper is not that of offering a genealogical reconstruction of Telesio’s notion of self-preservation (as Martin Muslow has already remarkably done) but rather to analyse its concept, its use within Telesio’s natural philosophy – with special regard to Telesio’s doctrine of motion –, and suggests, providing a working-hypothesis rather than as a solid Wirkungsgeschichte, that this doctrine might likely have had crucial bearings on seventeenth century developments of natural philosophy. I argue that it Telesio’s notion of self-preservation represents not only another element of critique of Aristotelianism, but also a crucial turn in the way Scholastic physics had understood activity in nature. Second, I show that Telesio’s notion of self-preservation was likely motivated by the need of providing an alternative to the Aristotelian theory of motion, and in particular roots on some crucial inconsistencies within Aristotle’s theory of falling objects. In conclusion of my paper, I hint to some possible bearing of Telesio’s doctrine of self-preservation on early modern proto-inertial natural philosophy, and in particular in authors such as Descartes, and Spinoza. While it is not possible to establish a direct influence of Telesio’s natural philosophers on these authors, and while I reject the narratives of Telesio as of a “forerunner” or “anticipator” of modern mechanics, I argue that Telesio’s critique of the Aristotelian doctrine of motion and activity and its explanation in terms of self-preserving tendencies contributed to create the intellectual atmosphere from which early modern mechanism stemmed.
This paper is divided in four sections. I first offer a short reconstruction of the theme of self-preservation in Western philosophy, focusing in particular on its reception within Scholasticism. Second, I reconstruct Telesio’s notion of self-preservation. Third, through a comparison with the Scholastic (and even pre-Scholastic) notion of self-preservation, it shall show that Telesio’s detachment from the Scholastic tradition consisted of three traits: (1) the claim that this tendency to self-preservation is teleologically oriented but not intrinsically definite in time (that is, does not have a terminus ad quem). Then (2), I shall show that while the Thomists grounded the drive to self-preservation within a structured theological framework — in which the instinct to self-preservation stems from the love of God for his creation —, Telesio’s project of a study of nature “within its own principles” excludes such theological structure from the picture. Finally (3) strictly connected to the two points above — that these solution brings about a decisive passage from a teleology conceived as the passage between different states and having goals extrinsic to the subject to one that I will rather define “autotelic,” in which the subject itself — its persistence into existence and increase in power — becomes the goal of activity. Fourth, it shall show how the notion of self-preservation contributes to provide, and was likely motivated by the search of, an alternative explanation to Aristotle’s theory of motion, which was rooted on the dualism between natural and violent motion. In Telesio’s mind, self-preservation replaces the idea that the tendency to motion is brought about by the form of things. The conclusion is admittedly the most hypothetical part of my paper. Indeed, the autotelic drive to self-preservation characterizes many (proto)inertial natural philosophies of the seventeenth century, such as that of Descartes, and Spinoza. While it is uncertain to what extent Telesio’s philosophy influenced these authors, I argue that Telesio’s notion of self-preservation contributed to create the intellectual environment that lead to further development of seventeenth century-mechanics
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