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 2017-07-03 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Baxter, one of the most famous Puritans of the seventeenth century, is generally known as a writer of practical and devotional literature. But he also excelled in knowledge of medieval and early modern scholastic theology, and was conversant with a wide variety of seventeenth-century philosophies. Baxter was among the early English polemicists who wrote against the mechanical philosophy of René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi in the years immediately following the establishment of the Royal Society. At the same time, he was friends with Robert Boyle and Matthew Hale, corresponded with Joseph Glanvill, and engaged in philosophical controversy with Henry More. In this book, David Sytsma presents a chronological and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-seventeenth-century England. Drawing on largely unexamined works, including Baxter's Methodus Theologiae Christianae (1681) and manuscript treatises and correspondence, Sytsma discusses Baxter's response to mechanical philosophers on the nature of substance, laws of motion, the soul, and ethics. Analysis of these topics is framed by a consideration of the growth of Christian Epicureanism in England, Baxter's overall approach to reason and philosophy, and his attempt to understand creation as an analogical reflection of God's power, wisdom, and goodness, or vestigia Trinitatis. Baxter's views on reason, analogical knowledge of God, and vestigia Trinitatis draw on medieval precedents and directly inform a largely hostile, though partially accommodating, response to mechanical philosophy.
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 Religion Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe written by R. Crocker and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a variety of perspectives, the essays presented here explore the profound interdependence of natural philosophy and rational religion in the `long seventeenth century' that begins with the burning of Bruno in 1600 and ends with the Enlightenment in the early Eighteenth century. From the writings of Grotius on natural law and natural religion, and the speculative, libertin novels of Cyrano de Bergerac, to the better-known works of Descartes, Malebranche, Cudworth, Leibniz, Boyle, Spinoza, Newton, and Locke, an increasing emphasis was placed on the rational relationship between religious doctrine, natural law, and a personal divine providence. While evidence for this intrinsic relationship was to be located in different places - in the ideas already present in the mind, in the observations and experiments of the natural philosophers, and even in the history, present experience, and prophesied future of mankind - the result enabled and shaped the broader intellectual and scientific discourses of the Enlightenment.
Download or read book Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy written by Margaret J. Osler and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gassendi s Ethics written by Lisa T. Sarasohn and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to explore the ethical thought of Pierre Gassendi, the seventeenth-century French priest who rehabilitated Epicurean philosophy in the Western tradition. Lisa T. Sarasohn's discussion of the relationship between Gassendi's philosophy of nature and his ethics discloses the underlying unity of his philosophy and elucidates this critical figure in the intellectual revolution.Sarasohn demonstrates that Gassendi's ethics was an important part of his attempt to Christianize Epicureanism. She shows how Gassendi integrated ideas of human freedom into a neo-Epicurean ethic where pleasure is the highest good, yet maintained a consistent belief in Christian providence. These views challenged what were then the new systems of philosophy, Hobbesian materialism and Cartesian rationalism. Sarasohn places Gassendi in his historical and intellectual context, considering him in relation to contemporary philosophers and within the patronage system that conditioned his own freedom. She investigates the links between his ethical thought and philosophy of science and makes sense of his attacks on astrology. Finally, her work clarifies Pierre Gassendi's considerable influence on seventeenth-century ethical and political philosophy, particularly on the work of John Locke—and thus on the whole English liberal tradition in political philosophy.
Download or read book Politics and Eternity Studies in the History of Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought written by Francis Oakley and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-06-08 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is composed of a series of studies in the history of political thought from late antiquity to the early-eighteenth century. They range broadly across theories of kingship, political theology, constitutional ideas, natural-law thinking, and consent theory.
Download or read book Newton and Newtonianism written by J.E. Force and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Newton's theology, his study of alchemy, the early reception of Newtonianism, & the history of Newtonian scholarship are topics included in the eleven essays that comprise this volume.
Download or read book Rethinking the Scientific Revolution written by Margaret J. Osler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-03-13 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the traditional historiography of the Scientific Revolution, probably the single most important unifying concept in the history of science. Usually referring to the period from Copernicus to Newton (roughly 1500 to 1700), the Scientific Revolution is considered to be the central episode in the history of science, the historical moment at which that unique way of looking at the world that we call 'modern science' and its attendant institutions emerged. It has been taken as the terminus a quo of all that followed. Starting with a dialogue between Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Richard S. Westfall, whose understanding of the Scientific Revolution differed in important ways, the papers in this volume reconsider canonical figures, their areas of study, and the formation of disciplinary boundaries during this seminal period of European intellectual history.
Download or read book On the Metaphysics of Experimental Physics written by K. Rogers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-04-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative and critical work addresses the question of why scientific realists and positivists consider experimental physics to be a natural and empirical science. Taking insights from contemporary science studies, continental philosophy, and the history of physics, this book describes and analyses the metaphysical presuppositions that underwrite the technological use of experimental apparatus and instruments to explore, model, and understand nature. By revealing this metaphysical foundation, the author questions whether experimental physics is a natural and empirical science at all.
Download or read book Creation written by Fraser Watts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 1999. How can we reconcile assumptions about the lawfulness of the universe with provision for chance events? Do the ‘laws of nature’ indicate what absolutely must happen, or just what is most likely to happen? These are important questions for both science and theology, and are explored here in the first in-depth coverage of an important but neglected topic. Including perspectives from prestigious contributions, and published with the backing of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR), Creation: Law and Probability employs the disciplines of history and philosophy, as well as cosmology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience in a fascinating dialogue of faith traditions.
Download or read book The Scientific Revolution written by William E. Burns and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-10-23 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An encyclopedic collection of key scientists and the tools and concepts they developed that transformed our understanding of the physical world. Many are familiar with the ideas of Copernicus, Descartes, and Galileo. But here the reader is also introduced to lesser known ideas and contributors to the Scientific Revolution, such as the mathematical Bernoulli Family and Andreas Vesalius, whose anatomical charts revolutionized the study of the human body. More marginal characters include the magician Robert Fludd. The encyclopedia also discusses subjects like Arabic science and the bizarre history of blood transfusions, and institutions like the Universities of Padua and Leiden, which were dominant forces in academic medicine and science.
Download or read book The Origins of the Idea of Scientific Progress written by Daniel Špelda and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy 1637 1739 written by Kenneth C. Clatterbaugh and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Perfect Will Theology written by J. Martin Bac and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book revisits four early-modern debates of Reformed theology concerning the will of God. Reformed scholasticism advocated a particular relationship between divine knowledge, will, and power, which was altered by Jesuits, Remonstrants, Descartes, and Spinoza. In all these debates modal categories like contingency and necessity play a prominent part. Therefore, these positions are evaluated with the help of modern modal logic including possible world semantics. The final part of this study presents a systematic defense of the Reformed position, which has been charged of theological determinism and of making God the author of sin. In modern terms, therefore, the relation of divine and human freedom and the problem of evil are discussed.
Download or read book The Nature of Nature written by Bruce Gordon and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 967 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual and cultural battles now raging over theism and atheism, conservatism and secular progressivism, dualism and monism, realism and antirealism, and transcendent reality versus material reality extend even into the scientific disciplines. This stunning new volume captures this titanic clash of worldviews among those who have thought most deeply about the nature of science and of the universe itself. Unmatched in its breadth and scope, The Nature of Nature brings together some of the most influential scientists, scholars, and public intellectuals—including three Nobel laureates—across a wide spectrum of disciplines and schools of thought. Here they grapple with a perennial question that has been made all the more pressing by recent advances in the natural sciences: Is the fundamental explanatory principle of the universe, life, and self-conscious awareness to be found in inanimate matter or immaterial mind? The answers found in this book have profound implications for what it means to do science, what it means to be human, and what the future holds for all of us.
Download or read book Creation written by Fraser N. Watts and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text arises from a conference of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) held in Boston in August 2004. Chapters include: 'Concepts of Law and Probability in Theology and Science', 'The Development of the Concept of Laws of Nature', 'Chance and Evolution' and 'God and Probability'.
Download or read book Margaret Cavendish written by Lisa Walters and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-28 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often thought that the numerous contradictory perspectives in Margaret Cavendish's writings demonstrate her inability to reconcile her feminism with her conservative, royalist politics. In this book Lisa Walters challenges this view and demonstrates that Cavendish's ideas more closely resemble republican thought, and that her methodology is the foundation for subversive political, scientific and gender theories. With an interdisciplinary focus Walters closely examines Cavendish's work and its context, providing the reader with an enriched understanding of women's contribution to early modern scientific theory, political philosophy, culture and folklore. Considering also Cavendish's ideas in relation to Hobbes and Paracelsus, this volume is of great interest to scholars and students of literature, philosophy, history of ideas, political theory, gender studies and history of science.
