The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy

This book reviews the transformation of natural philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries: description of nature in mathematical terms; comparison of natural phenomena to existing or imaginary machines and the use of mechanical analogies in natural philosophy.

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).

Preface. - List of Contributors. - IntroductionDaniel Garber and Sophie Roux. - 1. The Construction of Historical CategoriesRemarks on the Pre-History of the Mechanical PhilosophyDaniel Garber. - How Bacon Became BaconianGuido Giglioni. - An Empire Divided: French Natural Philosophy (1670 1690)Sophie Roux. - 2. Matter, Motion, Physics and MathematicsMatter and Form in Sixteenth-Century Spain: Some Case StudiesVictor Navarro Brotons. -The Isomorphism of Space, Time and Matter in Seventeenth-Century Natural PhilosophyCarla Rita Palmerino. - Beeckman, Descartes and Physico-mathematicsFrédéric de Buzon. - Between Mathematics and Experimental Philosophy: Hydrostatics in Scotland about 1700Antoni Malet. - 3. Mechanical Philosophy AppliedFrom a Metaphysical to a Scientific Object: Mechanizing Light in Galilean ScienceSusana Gómez. - Causation in Descartes Les Météores and Late Renaissance Aristotelian MeteorologyCraig Martin. - Descartes Healthy Machines and the Human ExceptionGideon Manning. - Mechanism and Surgery: Dionis' Anatomy (1690)Jacques Lambert. - Du Clos and the Mechanization of Chemical PhilosophyRémi Franckowiak. - Bibliography. - Author Index.