Early Modern Natural Philosophy Research Articles

An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge: The ‘Christian Philosophy’ of Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644), by Georgiana D. Hedesan

Jan Baptist van Helmont was perhaps the only successor to the medical reformer Paracelsus who developed a sufficiently distinct iatrochemistry to be remembered in his own right. The designation ‘Helmontian’ is almost as common as ‘Paracelsian’ among historians of early modern science and medicine. For a while, mostly in the second half of the seventeenth century, Van Helmont was recognised as an important thinker, and he engaged the attention of a number of prominent contemporaries. In spite of this historical importance, however, he has not attracted detailed scholarly attention. Although mentioned frequently in passing, or even at greater length, in secondary works on the history of early modern natural philosophy, chemistry and medicine, Van Helmont has only once received book-length treatment in English, prior to the appearance of this new monograph by Georgiana D. Hedesan. Accordingly, this second book on Van Helmont will henceforth be an obvious starting point for all those seeking to understand the baffling complexities of this Flemish iatrochemist. Divided into two parts, the first, ‘Van Helmont in Context’, is the most useful. Here the reader is provided with a sketch of the historical background to Van Helmont’s work in medical alchemy, including discussions of Paracelsus, and some of his leading followers: Petrus Severinus, Joseph Du Chesne and Oswald Croll. This is followed by as full a biography of Van Helmont as is possible. It concludes with a very useful account of the nature of Van Helmont’s major work, the Ortus medicina, which is revealed here to be a collection of unfinished, or poorly developed, works compiled after his death by his son from highly disordered papers. This in itself helps to explain the frustratingly incoherent nature of Van Helmont’s work. Although acknowledging that a proper edition of his manuscript remains ‘would have been a huge task’, Hedesan does not consider the distinct possibility that making sense of his papers would have been an impossible undertaking for the principal reason that they do not make any sense. In spite of a historically fleeting reputation as a great thinker, Van Helmont seems to have been one of those, like Giordano Bruno or Paracelsus, whose reputations are not based on the undeniable power and fruitfulness of their ideas, and their revelatory insights, but on a complex nexus of accidental historical factors.

On the Celestial Bodies in the Coimbra Commentary on De Caelo

I discuss in this paper some evidence of possible influence by Philoponus of Alexandria over the authorship of Coimbra Commentary on De caelo. Thus, I will analyze how Philoponus’ objections against the Aristotelian idea of nongenerated and imperishable heavenly bodies are integrated to the commentary, considering both explicit and implicit references to Philoponus that are present in the text. This discussion might add a valuable contribution to the studies of the reception of Ancient commentators in Early Modern natural philosophy.

The role of the telescope and microscope in the constitution of the Idea of scientific progress

ABSTRACTThe invention of optical instruments showed that the extent of human experience is not eternal and natural but contingent – it can change, depending on the availability and performance of optical instruments over time. This knowledge of the temporal variability of empirical knowledge led to changes in the methodology and epistemology of early modern natural philosophy. In this article, I focus mainly on three aspects of this process. Firstly, optical technique has shown that nature cannot be examined by an isolated individual. Natural philosophy must be a collective activity with institutional support. Secondly, use of optical instruments led to an understanding of the relativity of contemporary natural philosophy, no longer understood as the culmination of preceding development. The present state of natural philosophy becomes a transient stage in a longer development. Thirdly, telescopes and microscopes contributed to the formation of an idea of unending progress.

Reading Books in Natural Philosophy: How Conrad Gessner‘s Commentary on De Anima (1563) was Annotated and Interpreted

Conrad Gessner (1516–65) was town physician and lecturer at the Zwinglian reformed lectorium in Zurich. His approach towards the world and mankind was centred on his preoccupation with the human soul, an object of study that had challenged classical writers such as Aristotle and Galen, and which remained as important in post-Reformation debate. Writing commentaries on Aristotles De Anima (On the Soul) was part of early-modern natural philosophy education at university and formed the preparatory step for studying medicine. This article uses the case study of Gessners commentary on De Anima (1563) to explore how Gessners readers prioritised De Animas information. Gessners intention was to provide the students of philosophy and medicine with the most current and comprehensive thinking. His readers responses raise questions about evolving discussions in natural philosophy and medicine that concerned the foundations of preventive healthcare on the one hand, and of anatomically specified pathological medicine on the other, and Gessners part in helping these develop.

Manual Labor and ‘Mean Mechanicks’: Bacon’s Mechanical History and the Deprecation of Craft Skills in Early Modern Science

Abstract This paper aims to assess the credibility of the legitimation thesis; the claim that the development of experimental science involved a legitimation of certain aspects of artisanal practice or craft knowledge. My goal will be to provide a critique of this idea by examining Francis Bacon’s notion of ‘mechanical history’ and the influence it exerted on attempts by later generations of scholars to appropriate the knowledge of craft traditions. Specifically, I aim to show how such projects were often premised upon socio-epistemological ideals that served to reinforce, rather than relinquish boundaries between artisans and natural philosophers. It will be my claim that a closer examination of the presuppositions underlying attempts by early modern natural philosophers to appropriate craft knowledge reveals, not a desire to legitimize aspects of artisanal practice, but rather strategies aimed at demonstrating the inferiority of the local ways of knowing upon which it was based.

Pietro Daniel Omodeo (Editor). Duncan Liddel (1561–1613): Networks of Polymathy and the Northern European Renaissance. With Karin Friedrich. (Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions, 17.) xii + 322 pp., figs., bibl., index. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. €135 (cloth).

Pietro Daniel Omodeo (Editor). <i>Duncan Liddel (1561–1613): Networks of Polymathy and the Northern European Renaissance</i>. With Karin Friedrich. (Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions, 17.) xii + 322 pp., figs., bibl., index. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. €135 (cloth).

Air, Wind, Sun, Spirit

Guido Reni’s early critics described him as a painter of “celestial ideas,” and his artistic process has been characterized as one rooted in the fantasia and the Idea. From the seventeenth-century on, Reni’s figures were praised for the “airs of the heads,” a notion with astrological and medical connotations, while the papal physician and art critic Giulio Mancini described Reni’s manner as “spirited,” a term suggestive of the airy movement Reni so powerfully represented in his Aurora. The concept of “spirit” or “spirits” also retained important connotations in early modern medicine and natural philosophy. A reconsideration of Reni’s Aurora in the context of medical and natural philosophical investigations of generation, artistic creation and the nature of and relationship between celestial and terrestrial regions demonstrates the connections between early modern artistic reception, medicine and natural philosophy.

Mechanism as a scientific pluralism in the early modern medicine and natural philosophy

Mechanism as a scientific pluralism in the early modern medicine and natural philosophy

Latin and Vernacular Translation in Early Modern Natural Philosophical Literature

Abstract The late 16th century saw the publication of two descriptions of Monte Baldo written by apothecaries working in the nearby town of Verona. Both texts were published in Latin and Italian and have come to the attention of scholars for the vibrant descriptions of the mountain they contain, as well as for the insight they allow into the European networks of natural philosophers. A more detailed examination of the circumstances that produced Latin and Italian versions of these two descriptions of the same mountain, containing the same type of scientific investigation by men engaged in the same profession and from the same town, makes for a neat case study in considering the issues surrounding translation and authorship in the natural philosophical literature of the early modern period. By setting the study’s findings into the context of the recent ›translation turn‹ in literary studies - and Neo-Latin studies in particular - the case study reveals interesting data for the use of Latin in early modern natural philosophy, as well for the dynamics of northern Italy’s scientific community in the period.

Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy, edited by Peter Distelzweig, Benjamin Goldberg and Evan Ragland, 2016

Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy, edited by Peter Distelzweig, Benjamin Goldberg and Evan Ragland, 2016

Did Harrington’s cats catch Harvey’s chick? Vitalistic imagery in early modern republican political theory

ABSTRACTIn an early modern context, ‘vitalistic’ natural philosophies had been associated with antiauthoritarian political theories. Whilst mechanical philosophy has been characterized as amenable to (or even, sometimes, inspired by) conservative politics on account of the structural analogies between passive and inert particles that can only be organized by externally imposed strict mechanical laws on the one hand, and similarly passive citizens, on the other, vitalism understood as a monistic, dynamic materialism purportedly implicated alternative modes of agency and organization. This alternative model incorporated inherently active, self-organizing agents allegedly capable of bringing about higher structures in a bottom-up fashion both in the natural and in political realm. In this paper, I focus on James Harrington’s appropriation of William Harvey’s physiology and examine whether the republican philosopher actually made use of the political potential said to be inherent in vitalistic discourse. I intend to show that Harrington, rather than boldly capitalizing on vitalism’s decentralizing and democratic potential, adapts his physiological imagery to his wider set of ideas concerning human nature and moral psychology underpinning his politics. Simple analogy between vitalism and antiauthoritarianism is then lost in Harrington’s writings, pointing to a more complex relationship between early modern natural and political philosophy.

The Aeolipile as Experimental Model in Early Modern Natural Philosophy

What causes winds was regarded as one of the most difficult questions of early modern natural philosophy. Vitruvius, the ancient Roman architectural author, put forth an alternative to Aristotle’s theory by likening the generation of wind to the actions of the aeolipile, which he believed made artificial winds. As Vitruvius’s work proliferated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, numerous natural philosophers, including Descartes, used the aeolipile as a model for nature. Yet, interpretations of Vitruvius’s text and of the relation of the aeolipile to natural winds varied according to definitions and conceptions of air, wind, rarefaction, condensation, and vapor.

Experiment, Speculation, and Galileo’s Scientific Reasoning

Peter Anstey has criticized the traditional distinction between empiricism and rationalism. He proposes replacing it with a late seventeenth-century distinction: that between experimental and speculative natural philosophy. But the natural philosophy of Galileo Galilei cuts across this experimental-speculative divide. It resembles speculative natural philosophy insofar as its probative force depends upon a priori, mathematical reasoning. But it also resembles experimental natural philosophy insofar as the principles of such reasoning are tested against experience. To understand Galileo’s scientific reasoning we need to supplement the experimental-speculative distinction with a third category: that of a mathematically-oriented style of early modern natural philosophy.

Before the Two Cultures: Merging the Canons of the History of Science and Philosophy

This article argues that early modern philosophy should be seen as an integrated enterprise of moral and natural philosophy. Consequently, early modern moral and natural philosophy should be taught as intellectual enterprises that developed hand in hand. Further, the article argues that the unity of these two fields can be best introduced through methodological ideas. It illustrates these theses through a case study on Scottish Newtonianism, starting with visions concerning the unity of philosophy and then turning to a discussion of how methodological ideas figure in those visions. Finally, the article argues that methodological considerations can serve as good starting points to introduce and discuss central topics and canonical figures of the early modern period.

John Locke's "new method of making common-place-books": tradition, innovation and epistemic effects.

In 1676, the English physician and philosopher John Locke published a new method of commonplacing. He had developed this method and, in particular, a new approach to organizing and indexing the entries, in the course of 25 years of personal note-taking and it proved quite influential. This paper presents the three major approaches to commonplacing as practiced by physicians and other scholars before Locke--the systematic or textbook approach, the alphabetical approach and the sequential or index-based approach--and it analyzes the ways in which Locke himself applied them in his own commonplace books. In comparison with established approaches, his new method offered a maximum degree of flexibilitywhile facilitating the later retrieval of notes and minimising waste of space and paper. Thanks to these features, it was particularly well suited for physicians and natural philosophers who were interested in the infinite variety of natural particulars rather than in elegant quotes on a very limited set of classical topics. In conclusion, the potential epistemic impact of commonplacing on early modern medicine and natural philosophy is discussed, in particular its importance for contemporary debates about species and disease entities and for the emergence of the notion of "facts"!

Teleomechanism Redux? Functional Physiology and Hybrid Models of Life in Early Modern Natural Philosophy

The distinction between 'mechanical' and 'teleological' has been familiar since Kant; between a fully mechanistic, quantitative science of Nature and a teleological, qualitative approach to living beings, namely 'organisms' understood as purposive or at least functional entities. The beauty of this distinction is that it apparently makes intuitive sense and maps onto historico-conceptual constellations in the life sciences, regarding the status of the body versus that of the machine. I argue that the mechanism-teleology distinction is imprecise and flawed using examples including the 'functional' features present even in Cartesian physiology, the Oxford Physiologists' work on circulation and respiration, the fact that the model of the 'body-machine' is not a mechanistic reduction of organismic properties to basic physical properties but is focused on the uniqueness of organic life; and the concept of 'animal economy' in vitalist medicine, which I present as a 'teleomechanistic' concept of organism (borrowing a term of Lenoir's which he applied to nineteenth-century embryology)--neither mechanical nor teleological.

Howard Marchitello The Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and GalileoThe Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo. Howard Marchitello. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xii+236.

<i>Howard Marchitello</i> The Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo<i>The Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo</i>. Howard Marchitello. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xii+236.

Newton versus Leibniz: intransparency versus inconsistency

In this paper I argue that inconsistencies in scientific theories may arise from the type of causality relation they—tacitly or explicitly—embody. All these seemingly different causality relations can be subsumed under a general strategy developed to defeat the paradoxes which inevitably occur in our experience of the real. With respect to this, scientific theories are just a subclass of the larger class of metaphysical theories, construed as theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world consistently. All metaphysical theories share a common structural backbone specificially designed to defeat paradoxes, their often wildly diverging ontological claims notwithstanding. This common structure shapes the procedures which govern the invention of ideas in the context of such theories, by codifying some onto-logical a priori assumptions regarding the consistency of reality into its bare conceptual framework. Causality plays a key role here, because it implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalising power of the theories concerned. These demands are often met by the introduction of a metalevel which encompasses the notions of ‘system’ and ‘lawful behaviour’. In classical mechanics, the division between universal and particular leaves its traces in the separate treatment of cinematics and dynamics. The fundamental backbone’s specific gestalt thus functions as a theory’s individual signature and paves the way to a comparative historical approach towards their study. An important part of my paper therefore explores the strong connections between paradoxes as they appear and are dealt with in ancient philosophy and their re-appearance in early modern natural philosophy and science. This analysis is applied to the mechanical theories of Newton and Leibniz, with some surprising results.

Experimental pedagogy and the eclipse of Robert Boyle in England

One of the most important developments in early modern natural philosophy was the emergence of a distinctive movement of experimental philosophy in the mid-seventeenth century. Robert Boyle was in ...

Once more unto the breach: Kant and Newton

Watching the stream of papers and monographs on Kant these days, one might think the Sage of Konigsberg cared little for anything besides the metaphysics of modality and the nature of obligation. That is a far cry from the real Kant, whose first and last writings, nearly six decades apart, were on the foundations of exact science, with steady, robust contributions to that field every decade or so. The zenith of his dialogue with classical physics was about two-thirds into his career and culminated in the masterful Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science of 1786, henceforth ‘‘Foundations.’’ Michael Friedman’s book is the latest, most valiant attempt to tackle it. In form and proportion, it evokes Aristarchus of Samothrace annotating Homer; in aim and content, it recalls Porphyry explaining Aristotle: six hundred pages of commentary on the most difficult hundred pages in all philosophy of physics. Friedman sets himself the task of making transparent sense of every utterance in a small book that, by a combination of difficult matter, historical distance, and taxing prose, is often impenetrable. He succeeds by any measure, with a poise that belies the titanic efforts it cost him. In the process, he sets a new standard for interpreting Kant’s philosophy of science and early modern natural philosophy more broadly. He clarifies opaque passages with enviable ease and deploys at length the technical prowess that made him legendary among specialists.