Download or read book The New Mechanical Philosophy written by Stuart Glennan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume argues for a new image of science that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, casting the work of science as an effort to understand those mechanisms. Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them in physical, life, and social sciences.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution written by David Marshall Miller and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-06 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of cutting-edge scholarship on the close interaction of philosophy with science at the birth of the modern age.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy written by Stuart Glennan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientists studying the burning of stars, the evolution of species, DNA, the brain, the economy, and social change, all frequently describe their work as searching for mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into four Parts: Historical perspectives on mechanisms The nature of mechanisms Mechanisms and the philosophy of science Disciplinary perspectives on mechanisms. Within these Parts central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century; what mechanisms are made of and how they are organized; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology, and history of science.
Download or read book Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers written by David S. Sytsma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Baxter, one of the 17th century's most famous Puritans, is known as an author of devotional literature. But he was also skilled in medieval philosophy. In this work, David Sytsma draws on largely unexamined works to present a chronogolical and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-17th-century England
Download or read book Mechanism written by Domenico Bertoloni Meli and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mechanical philosophy first emerged as a leading player on the intellectual scene in the early modern period—seeking to explain all natural phenomena through the physics of matter and motion—and the term mechanism was coined. Over time, natural phenomena came to be understood through machine analogies and explanations and the very word mechanism, a suggestive and ambiguous expression, took on a host of different meanings. Emphasizing the important role of key ancient and early modern protagonists, from Galen to Robert Boyle, this book offers a historical investigation of the term mechanism from the late Renaissance to the end of the seventeenth century, at a time when it was used rather frequently in complex debates about the nature of the notion of the soul. In this rich and detailed study, Domenico Bertoloni Melifocuses on strategies for discussing the notion of mechanism in historically sensitive ways; the relation between mechanism, visual representation, and anatomy; the usage and meaning of the term in early modern times; and Marcello Malpighi and the problems of fecundation and generation, among the most challenging topics to investigate from a mechanistic standpoint.
Download or read book Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion written by Klaas van Berkel and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-08-14 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Historians of science and the philosophy of science find the substance and stance of Isaac Beeckman's thought highly interesting, for it represented an early attempt to develop a comprehensive picture of the world by means of mechanistic theory, that is, forces acting upon one another. Besides possibly influencing Descartes, this view broke away from medieval religious assumptions and belief in occult forces. Berkel teases out Beeckman's evolving approach to nature by means of his extensive journals, explaining the leading concept of "picturability." Beeckman supplied a stepping stone (one still not widely appreciated) on the path that led to the scientific revolution"--
Download or read book The Scientist s Atom and the Philosopher s Stone written by Alan Chalmers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-04 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the results of his own scholarly research as well as that of others the author offers, for the first time, a comprehensive and documented history of theories of the atom from Democritus to the twentieth century. This is not history for its own sake. By critically reflecting on the various versions of atomic theories of the past the author is able to grapple with the question of what sets scientific knowledge apart from other kinds of knowledge, philosophical knowledge in particular. He thereby engages historically with issues concerning the nature and status of scientific knowledge that were dealt with in a more abstract way in his What Is This Thing Called Science?, a book that has been a standard text in philosophy of science for three decades and which is available in nineteen languages. Speculations about the fundamental structure of matter from Democritus to the seventeenth-century mechanical philosophers and beyond are construed as categorically distinct from atomic theories amenable to experimental investigation and support and as contributing little to the latter from a historical point of view. The thesis will provoke historians and philosophers of science alike and will require a revision of a range of standard views in the history of science and philosophy. The book is key reading for students and scholars in History and Philosophy of Science and will be instructive for and provide a challenge to philosophers, historians and scientists more generally.
Download or read book Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy written by Margaret J. Osler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-07 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The difference between Pierre Gassendi's (1592-1655) and René Descartes' (1596-1650) versions of the mechanical philosophy directly reflected the differences in their theological presuppositions. Gassendi described a world utterly contingent on divine will and expressed his conviction that empirical methods are the only way to acquire knowledge about the natural world. Descartes, on the contrary, described a world in which God had embedded necessary relations, some of which enable us to have a priori knowledge of substantial parts of the natural world. In this book, Professor Osler explores theological conceptions of contingency and necessity in the world and how these ideas influenced the development of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century. She examines the transformation of medieval ideas about God's relationship to the Creation into seventeenth-century ideas about matter and method as embodied in early articulations of the mechanical philosophy. Refracted through the prism of the mechanical philosophy, these theological conceptualizations of contingency and necessity in the world were mirrored in different styles of science that emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Download or read book An Explanation of a Mechanical Philosophy written by John James Van Nostrand and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Boyle on Fire written by William Eaton and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-05-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of Robert Boyle (1627-1691) is a hot topic in early modern philosophy. Boyle was at the centre of the scientific community of 17th-century England, and an accurate view of the Enlightenment scientific revolution is impossible without recognition of the contributions that he made. Work on Boyle's philosophy is also shedding light on contemporary issues in the philosophy of science - it can help us understand the nature of scientific explanation and the role that the mechanical model of explanation plays in present-day science. Boyle's mechanical philosophy ushered in a new explanatory model for science and even though his corpuscular hypothesis failed, its failure does not entail the failure of the explanatory model of which it was an instance. Boyle on Fire demonstrates these points by examining Boyle's work concerning a method of experiment common in the seventeenth century called Fire Analysis. In the Sceptical Chymist (1661), Boyle attacks elemental theories of chemical explanation primarily by raising objections against Aristotelian and Paracelsian interpretations of fire analysis. The book reconstructs Boyle's corpuscular account of fire analysis and then compares it to these objections. This process reveals those characteristics of mechanical explanations that make them epistemologically superior to elemental theories of chemical explanation, and it is these characteristics that survive the death of the corpuscular hypothesis and have become an enduring feature of the scientific enterprise.
Download or read book The Mechanical World written by Beate Krickel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph examines the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic philosophy, a way of thinking that has returned to center stage. It challenges a variant of reductionism with regard to higher-level phenomena, which has crystallized as a default position among these so-called New Mechanists. Furthermore, it opposes those philosophers who reject the possibility of interlevel causation. Contemporary philosophers believe that the explanation of scientific phenomena requires the discovery of relevant mechanisms. As a result, new mechanists are, in the main, concerned solely with epistemological questions. But, the author argues, their most central claims rely on metaphysical assumptions. Thus, they must also take into account metaphysics, a system of thought concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world around it. This branch of philosophy does indeed matter to the empirical sciences. The chapters investigate the nature of mechanisms, their components, and the ways in which they can bring about different phenomena. In addition, the author develops a novel account of causation in terms of activities. The analysis provides the basis for many further research projects on mechanisms and their relations to, for example, the mind-body problem, realization, multiple realization, natural kinds, causation, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and scientific levels.
Download or read book The Mechanical Mind written by Tim Crane and published by Presbyterian Publishing Corp. This book was released on 2003-04-24 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of the theories and arguments surrounding the notions of thought and representation. Now in its 2nd edition, Cranes's classic text has introduced thousands to some of the most important ideas in philosophy of mind.
Download or read book The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy written by Sophie Roux and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mechanisation of Natural Philosophy is devoted to various aspects of the transformation of natural philosophy during the 16th and 17th centuries that is usually described as mechanical philosophy . 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).
Download or read book A Companion to Hobbes written by Marcus P. Adams and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers comprehensive treatment of Thomas Hobbes’s thought, providing readers with different ways of understanding Hobbes as a systematic philosopher As one of the founders of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes is best known for his ideas regarding the nature of legitimate government and the necessity of society submitting to the absolute authority of sovereign power. Yet Hobbes produced a wide range of writings, from translations of texts by Homer and Thucydides, to interpretations of Biblical books, to works devoted to geometry, optics, morality, and religion. Hobbes viewed himself as presenting a unified method for theoretical and practical science—an interconnected system of philosophy that provides many entry points into his thought. A Companion to Hobbes is an expertly curated collection of essays offering close textual engagement with the thought of Thomas Hobbes in his major works while probing his ideas regarding natural philosophy, mathematics, human nature, civil philosophy, religion, and more. The Companion discusses the ways in which scholars have tried to understand the unity and diversity of Hobbes’s philosophical system and examines the reception of the different parts of Hobbes’s philosophy by thinkers such as René Descartes, Margaret Cavendish, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Presenting a diversity of fresh perspectives by both emerging and established scholars, this volume: Provides a comprehensive treatment of Hobbes’s thought in his works, including Elements of Law, Elements of Philosophy, and Leviathan Explores the connecting points between Hobbes’ metaphysics, epistemology, mathematics, natural philosophy, morality, and civil philosophy Offers readers strategies for understanding how the parts of Hobbes’s philosophical system fit together Examines Hobbes’s philosophy of mathematics and his attempts to understand geometrical objects and definitions Considers Hobbes’s philosophy in contexts such as the natural state of humans, gender relations, and materialist worldviews Challenges conceptions of Hobbes’s moral theory and his views about the rights of sovereigns Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Hobbes is an invaluable resource for scholars and advanced students of Early modern thought, particularly those from disciplines such as History of Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Intellectual History, History of Politics, Political Theory, and English.
Download or read book The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy written by Sylvia Berryman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been thought that the ancient Greeks did not take mechanics seriously as part of the workings of nature, and that therefore their natural philosophy was both primitive and marginal. In this book Sylvia Berryman challenges that assumption, arguing that the idea that the world works 'like a machine' can be found in ancient Greek thought, predating the early modern philosophy with which it is most closely associated. Her discussion ranges over topics including balancing and equilibrium, lifting water, sphere-making and models of the heavens, and ancient Greek pneumatic theory, with detailed analysis of thinkers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Hero of Alexandria. Her book shows scholars of ancient Greek philosophy why it is necessary to pay attention to mechanics, and shows historians of science why the differences between ancient and modern reactions to mechanics are not as great as was generally thought.
Download or read book A System of Mechanical Philosophy written by John Robison and published by . This book was released on 1822 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts written by Thomas Young and published by London : Taylor and Walton. This book was released on 1845 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
