The Problem of Bodies

Abstract

Abstract Building on the preceding chapters, the authors widen their purview in Chapter 4 to introduce the central question of the book: the “problem of bodies.” They articulate it in its early 18th century philosophical context, and claim that its solution required philosophers to discharge four distinct tasks: Nature, Action, Evidence, and Principle. Success, they argue, requires a “philosophical mechanics.” They show the broader epistemological and metaphysical challenges at stake in the 1730s, and offer a first glimpse of an emerging tension between the two principal strands of research that comprise philosophical mechanics: physics (dominated by philosophers) and rational mechanics (dominated by mathematicians).