“The main Business of natural Philosophy”

“The main Business of natural Philosophy”
Author: Steffen Ducheyne
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2011-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9400721269

In this monograph, Steffen Ducheyne provides a historically detailed and systematically rich explication of Newton’s methodology. Throughout the pages of this book, it will be shown that Newton developed a complex natural-philosophical methodology which encompasses procedures to minimize inductive risk during the process of theory formation and which, thereby, surpasses a standard hypothetico-deductive methodological setting. Accordingly, it will be highlighted that the so-called ‘Newtonian Revolution’ was not restricted to the empirical and theoretical dimensions of science, but applied equally to the methodological dimension of science. Furthermore, it will be documented that Newton’s methodology was far from static and that it developed alongside with his scientific work. Attention will be paid not only to the successes of Newton’s innovative methodology, but equally to its tensions and limitations. Based on a thorough study of Newton’s extant manuscripts, this monograph will address and contextualize, inter alia, Newton’s causal realism, his views on action at a distance and space and time, the status of efficient causation in the /Principia/, the different phases of his methodology, his treatment of force and the constituents of the physico-mathematical models in the context of Book I of the /Principia/, the analytic part of the argument for universal gravitation, the meaning and significance of his regulae philosophandi, the methodological differences between his mechanical and optical work, and, finally, the interplay between Newton’s theology and his natural philosophy.

A History of Natural Philosophy

A History of Natural Philosophy
Author: Edward Grant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2007-01-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521869315

This book describes how natural philosophy and exact mathematical sciences joined together to make the Scientific Revolution possible.

The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy

The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy
Author: Sophie Roux
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2012-09-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400743440

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).

Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution

Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution
Author: Walter Roy Laird
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1402059671

This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or between textual traditions and the wider world of practice. Its purpose is to show how the accommodations sometimes made in the course of these conflicts ultimately contributed to the emergence of modern mechanics.

The Books of Nature and Scripture

The Books of Nature and Scripture
Author: J.E. Force
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9401732493

Dick Popkin and James Force have attended a number of recent conferences where it was apparent that much new and important research was being done in the fields of interpreting Newton's and Spinoza's contributions as biblical scholars and of the relationship between their biblical scholarship and other aspects of their particular philosophies. This collection represents the best current research in this area. It stands alone as the only work to bring together the best current work on these topics. Its primary audience is specialised scholars of the thought of Newton and Spinoza as well as historians of the philosophical ideas of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Seeking Nature's Logic

Seeking Nature's Logic
Author: David B. Wilson
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2009
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0271035250

"Studies the path of natural philosophy (i.e., physics) from Isaac Newton through Scotland into the nineteenth-century background to the modern revolution in physics. Examines how the history of science has been influenced by John Robison and other notable intellectuals of the Scottish Enlightenment"--Provided by publisher.