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Cartesian Empiricisms

  • Book
  • © 2013

Overview

Editors:
  1. Mihnea Dobre

    1. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Tammy Nyden

    1. Philosophy Department, Grinnell College, Grinnell, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • The only full-length study on the topic of Cartesian Empiricism
  • Provides a comprehensive guide to over twenty-five seventeenth century Cartesians for whom experiment and observation played a key role
  • Spans a wide range of Cartesian sciences, including physics, chemistry, medicine and psychology
  • Spans a wide range of national contexts, including French, Dutch, German, and English
  • Written by leading and emerging international scholars in the field
  • Represents the most up-to-date research in the history of early modern philosophy

Part of the book series: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (AUST, volume 31)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Mihnea Dobre, Tammy Nyden
    Pages 1-21

  3. Cartesian Natural Philosophy: Receptions and Context

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 23-23
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    2. Censorship, Condemnations, and the Spread of Cartesianism

      • Roger Ariew
      Pages 25-46

    3. Was There a Cartesian Experimentalism in 1660s France?

      • Sophie Roux
      Pages 47-88

    4. Dutch Cartesian Empiricism and the Advent of Newtonianism

      • Wiep van Bunge
      Pages 89-104

    5. Heat, Action, Perception: Models of Living Beings in German Medical Cartesianism

      • Justin E. H. Smith
      Pages 105-123

    6. Could a Practicing Chemical Philosopher Be a Cartesian?

      • Bernard Joly
      Pages 125-148

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 307-326
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Keywords

About this book

Cartesian Empiricisms considers the role Cartesians played in the acceptance of experiment in natural philosophy during the seventeenth century. It aims to correct a partial image of Cartesian philosophers as paradigmatic system builders who failed to meet challenges posed by the new science’s innovative methods. Studies in this volume argue that far from being strangers to experiment, many Cartesians used and integrated it into their natural philosophies. Chapter 1 reviews the historiographies of early modern philosophy, science, and Cartesianism and their recent critiques. The first part of the volume explores various Cartesian contexts of experiment: the impact of French condemnations of Cartesian philosophy in the second half of the seventeenth century; the relation between Cartesian natural philosophy and the Parisian academies of the 1660s; the complex interplay between Cartesianism and Newtonianism in the Dutch Republic; the Cartesian influence on medical teaching at theUniversity of Duisburg; and the challenges chemistry posed to the Cartesian theory of matter. The second part of the volume examines the work of particular Cartesians, such as Henricus Regius, Robert Desgabets, Jacques Rohault, Burchard de Volder, Antoine Le Grand, and Balthasar Bekker. Together these studies counter scientific revolution narratives that take rationalism and empiricism to be two mutually exclusive epistemological and methodological paradigms. The volume is thus a helpful instrument for anyone interested both in the histories of early modern philosophy and science, as well as for scholars interested in new evaluations of the historiographical tools that framed our traditional narratives.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Mihnea Dobre

  • Philosophy Department, Grinnell College, Grinnell, USA

    Tammy Nyden

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