Ernst Mach’s definition of the relationship between thoughts and facts is well known, but the question of how Mach conceived of their actual relationship has received much less attention. This paper aims to address this gap in light of Mary B. Hesse’s view of a postempiricist approach to natural science. As this paper will show, this view is characterized by a constructivist conception of the relationship between theory and facts that seems to be consistent with Mach’s observations on scientific knowledge. The paper first explores Hesse’s account of postempiricism and her project of a new epistemology. It then considers Ernst Mach’s conception of facts as the middle term of a triad of concepts that includes thoughts and elements as extreme terms. Finally, the paper will offer concluding remarks on Mach’s contribution to the debate on scientific realism and his attempt to redefine the notions of correspondence and objectivity in science.
{"title":"Ernst Mach’s Contribution to the Philosophy of Science in Light of Mary B. Hesse’s Postempiricism","authors":"Pietro Gori","doi":"10.1086/715876","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715876","url":null,"abstract":"Ernst Mach’s definition of the relationship between thoughts and facts is well known, but the question of how Mach conceived of their actual relationship has received much less attention. This paper aims to address this gap in light of Mary B. Hesse’s view of a postempiricist approach to natural science. As this paper will show, this view is characterized by a constructivist conception of the relationship between theory and facts that seems to be consistent with Mach’s observations on scientific knowledge. The paper first explores Hesse’s account of postempiricism and her project of a new epistemology. It then considers Ernst Mach’s conception of facts as the middle term of a triad of concepts that includes thoughts and elements as extreme terms. Finally, the paper will offer concluding remarks on Mach’s contribution to the debate on scientific realism and his attempt to redefine the notions of correspondence and objectivity in science.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"83 1","pages":"383 - 411"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81175994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, we investigate how the life and work of Louis Rougier relate to the broader political dimension of logical empiricist philosophy. We focus on three practical projects of Rougier in the 1930s and 1940s: first, his attempts to integrate French-speaking philosophers into an international network of scientific philosophers by organizing two Unity of Science conferences in Paris; second, his role in the renewal of liberalism through the organization of the Walter Lippmann Colloquium; and third, his attempts at political negotiations between Great Britain and the Vichy regime during the Second World War. These activities of Rougier in the 1930s and 1940s have so far never been discussed as part of a unified project on his part. Based on our investigations of these practical projects of Rougier, we argue that his relation to logical empiricist philosophers should primarily be understood on the level of action. His projects aimed to proliferate the concrete improvement of society and the lives of its citizens by expunging all metaphysical questions and speculations from the sphere of social discourse. Rougier conceived logical empiricist philosophers as allies to achieve such practical effects in society.
{"title":"Positivism in Action: The Case of Louis Rougier","authors":"Fons Dewulf, M. Simons","doi":"10.1086/715873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715873","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we investigate how the life and work of Louis Rougier relate to the broader political dimension of logical empiricist philosophy. We focus on three practical projects of Rougier in the 1930s and 1940s: first, his attempts to integrate French-speaking philosophers into an international network of scientific philosophers by organizing two Unity of Science conferences in Paris; second, his role in the renewal of liberalism through the organization of the Walter Lippmann Colloquium; and third, his attempts at political negotiations between Great Britain and the Vichy regime during the Second World War. These activities of Rougier in the 1930s and 1940s have so far never been discussed as part of a unified project on his part. Based on our investigations of these practical projects of Rougier, we argue that his relation to logical empiricist philosophers should primarily be understood on the level of action. His projects aimed to proliferate the concrete improvement of society and the lives of its citizens by expunging all metaphysical questions and speculations from the sphere of social discourse. Rougier conceived logical empiricist philosophers as allies to achieve such practical effects in society.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"3 1","pages":"461 - 487"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89531299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christiaan Huygens’s late writings, ranging from 1686 to 1695, bear witness to his philosophical and theological reflections. In his Cosmotheoros, which was intended for publication, and other late writings that can be regarded as its preparatory drafts, Huygens deals with issues central to seventeenth-century philosophical debates: God’s power, divine and human intelligence, probabilistic epistemology, natural theology, and the plurality of worlds. This paper explains how Huygens’s reflections on animals and their souls, rational or not, play a key role in his epistemological reflections on natural theology. The issue of animal generation, as well as of animal souls, is crucial to identifying elements of continuity between the scientific topics of Huygens’s works, and may be considered as the point of intersection between his understanding of mechanism and of the teleology of nature. This neglected perspective on Huygens’s philosophical-natural animism reveals key elements of his model of rationality and of his attitude towards religion, demonstrating his involvement in the debate over animism, in which he seems to have been strongly influenced by English Protestant empiricism.
{"title":"Christiaan Huygens’s Natural Theology in His Cosmotheoros and Other Late Writings","authors":"Ludovica Marinucci","doi":"10.1086/715878","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715878","url":null,"abstract":"Christiaan Huygens’s late writings, ranging from 1686 to 1695, bear witness to his philosophical and theological reflections. In his Cosmotheoros, which was intended for publication, and other late writings that can be regarded as its preparatory drafts, Huygens deals with issues central to seventeenth-century philosophical debates: God’s power, divine and human intelligence, probabilistic epistemology, natural theology, and the plurality of worlds. This paper explains how Huygens’s reflections on animals and their souls, rational or not, play a key role in his epistemological reflections on natural theology. The issue of animal generation, as well as of animal souls, is crucial to identifying elements of continuity between the scientific topics of Huygens’s works, and may be considered as the point of intersection between his understanding of mechanism and of the teleology of nature. This neglected perspective on Huygens’s philosophical-natural animism reveals key elements of his model of rationality and of his attitude towards religion, demonstrating his involvement in the debate over animism, in which he seems to have been strongly influenced by English Protestant empiricism.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"1 1","pages":"642 - 659"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75981169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the early twenty-first century, we often ask whether there is life (intelligent or otherwise) in the cosmos, but almost never whether the heavens themselves are actually alive or animated, that is, infused somehow with a soul, the anima mundi, or some such entity. This was not the case in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the early modern period. Although Aristotelians normally answered no to this question, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) took a decidedly Platonic turn when he answered the question positively, insistently, and consistently in a broad range of works over his entire philosophical career. By contrast, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), Ficino’s younger contemporary, began by embracing the new Platonic position but joined the Aristotelian fold in his later works. In this essay, I will briefly compare and contrast Ficino’s solid and consistent position with the changing trajectory of Pico’s views over the course of his short but intense career. This essay is an exploration of central themes and some preliminary reflections thereon. These essentially Platonic views of a living universe provide the conceptual and literary foundations for understanding this issue in the early modern period.
在21世纪初,我们经常问宇宙中是否有生命(智慧的或其他的),但几乎从来没有问过天堂本身是否真的有生命或有生气,也就是说,以某种方式注入了灵魂,宇宙万物,或其他类似的实体。在中世纪、文艺复兴或近代早期,情况并非如此。虽然亚里士多德学派通常对这个问题的回答是否定的,但马西利奥·菲西诺(1433-99)在他整个哲学生涯的广泛著作中,积极、坚持、一致地回答了这个问题,他果断地转向了柏拉图式。相比之下,与菲西诺同时代的乔瓦尼·皮科·德拉·米兰多拉(Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 1463-94)一开始接受了新的柏拉图主义立场,但在他后来的作品中加入了亚里士多德的阵营。在这篇文章中,我将简要地比较菲西诺坚定而一致的立场与皮科在其短暂而激烈的职业生涯中不断变化的观点轨迹。本文是对中心主题的探索和一些初步的思考。这些本质上是柏拉图式的关于生命宇宙的观点,为在近代早期理解这个问题提供了概念和文学基础。
{"title":"A Cosmological Controversy in the Renaissance: Marsilio Ficino’s and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Contrasting Views on the Animation of the Heavens","authors":"H. D. Rutkin","doi":"10.1086/715884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715884","url":null,"abstract":"In the early twenty-first century, we often ask whether there is life (intelligent or otherwise) in the cosmos, but almost never whether the heavens themselves are actually alive or animated, that is, infused somehow with a soul, the anima mundi, or some such entity. This was not the case in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the early modern period. Although Aristotelians normally answered no to this question, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) took a decidedly Platonic turn when he answered the question positively, insistently, and consistently in a broad range of works over his entire philosophical career. By contrast, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), Ficino’s younger contemporary, began by embracing the new Platonic position but joined the Aristotelian fold in his later works. In this essay, I will briefly compare and contrast Ficino’s solid and consistent position with the changing trajectory of Pico’s views over the course of his short but intense career. This essay is an exploration of central themes and some preliminary reflections thereon. These essentially Platonic views of a living universe provide the conceptual and literary foundations for understanding this issue in the early modern period.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"16 1","pages":"604 - 620"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79167234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766), Kant remarks that Stahl, with his admission of immaterial forces for the explanation of organisms, was “closer to the truth than Hoffmann and Boerhaave, to name but a few,” although the latter adopted a “more philosophical method.” This puzzling statement is very significant for the understanding of Kant’s reception of animism, as it documents Kant’s reaction to the issues raised by the Leibniz-Stahl controversy and his striking preference for Stahl’s nonmechanistic account of organisms. Kant agrees with Stahl that organisms suggest the existence of immaterial thinking beings, but at the same time, the example of this speculative hypothesis leads him to question the explanatory power of metaphysical hypotheses in natural philosophy in general, as well as the possibility of empirically distinguishing among different hypotheses, such as monadology, materialism, and hylozoism. After the analysis of Kant’s skeptical conclusions in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, I discuss how this earlier connection of medicine, life sciences, and metaphysics leaves traces in Kant’s later work, by analyzing Kant’s discussion of Samuel Sömmering’s claim that matter “can be animated” in On the Organ of the Soul (1796) and the preliminary drafts for this essay.
{"title":"“Stahl Was Often Closer to the Truth”: Kant’s Second Thoughts on Animism, Monadology, and Hylozoism","authors":"P. Pecere","doi":"10.1086/715879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715879","url":null,"abstract":"In the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766), Kant remarks that Stahl, with his admission of immaterial forces for the explanation of organisms, was “closer to the truth than Hoffmann and Boerhaave, to name but a few,” although the latter adopted a “more philosophical method.” This puzzling statement is very significant for the understanding of Kant’s reception of animism, as it documents Kant’s reaction to the issues raised by the Leibniz-Stahl controversy and his striking preference for Stahl’s nonmechanistic account of organisms. Kant agrees with Stahl that organisms suggest the existence of immaterial thinking beings, but at the same time, the example of this speculative hypothesis leads him to question the explanatory power of metaphysical hypotheses in natural philosophy in general, as well as the possibility of empirically distinguishing among different hypotheses, such as monadology, materialism, and hylozoism. After the analysis of Kant’s skeptical conclusions in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, I discuss how this earlier connection of medicine, life sciences, and metaphysics leaves traces in Kant’s later work, by analyzing Kant’s discussion of Samuel Sömmering’s claim that matter “can be animated” in On the Organ of the Soul (1796) and the preliminary drafts for this essay.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"47 1","pages":"660 - 678"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90276600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The historian and philosopher of science Hélène Metzger (1889–1944) delivered “Le rôle des précurseurs dans l’évolution de la science” in 1939 as a lecture of the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et Techniques of the University of Paris, later published in their journal Thalès. In this talk, Metzger not only attacks the notion of “precursor” and a history of science focused on “great men” and their discoveries, but also makes a strong case for the philosophical value of the history of science. We here offer a translation of this witty and subtle essay in the historiography of science, followed by our commentary.
1939年,历史学家和科学哲学家梅茨格(1889-1944)在巴黎大学科学与技术历史研究所的演讲中发表了“Le rôle des pracimcurseurs dans l’samvolution de la science”,后来发表在他们的期刊《thal》上。在这次演讲中,梅茨格不仅抨击了“先驱者”的概念和专注于“伟人”及其发现的科学史,而且还为科学史的哲学价值提出了强有力的论据。我们在这里提供这篇科学史学中机智而微妙的文章的翻译,然后是我们的评论。
{"title":"Hélène Metzger on Precursors: A Historian and Philosopher of Science Confronts Her Evil Demon","authors":"Cristina Chimisso, N. Jardine","doi":"10.1086/715155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/715155","url":null,"abstract":"The historian and philosopher of science Hélène Metzger (1889–1944) delivered “Le rôle des précurseurs dans l’évolution de la science” in 1939 as a lecture of the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et Techniques of the University of Paris, later published in their journal Thalès. In this talk, Metzger not only attacks the notion of “precursor” and a history of science focused on “great men” and their discoveries, but also makes a strong case for the philosophical value of the history of science. We here offer a translation of this witty and subtle essay in the historiography of science, followed by our commentary.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"81 1","pages":"331 - 353"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83896175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Girolamo Cardano makes a number of surprising, even shocking claims about the soul in his De subtilitate, one of the most widely read works of natural philosophy in the sixteenth century. When he was finally investigated by the Roman Inquisition and the Index, these claims did not go unnoticed. This study will narrow in on three passages marked as heretical by the first Holy Office censor of De subtilitate. It will consider the Inquisition’s priorities and ask about materialism, determinism, and conceptual inconsistency in Cardano’s views on the soul. The study will give special attention to the claim made by Cardano that souls can be reduced to celestial heat. In addition to De subtilitate, several of Cardano’s other works will be considered for added perspective, especially Contradicentium medicorum libri duodecim.
{"title":"A Hot Mess: Girolamo Cardano, the Inquisition, and the Soul","authors":"J. Regier","doi":"10.1086/714435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/714435","url":null,"abstract":"Girolamo Cardano makes a number of surprising, even shocking claims about the soul in his De subtilitate, one of the most widely read works of natural philosophy in the sixteenth century. When he was finally investigated by the Roman Inquisition and the Index, these claims did not go unnoticed. This study will narrow in on three passages marked as heretical by the first Holy Office censor of De subtilitate. It will consider the Inquisition’s priorities and ask about materialism, determinism, and conceptual inconsistency in Cardano’s views on the soul. The study will give special attention to the claim made by Cardano that souls can be reduced to celestial heat. In addition to De subtilitate, several of Cardano’s other works will be considered for added perspective, especially Contradicentium medicorum libri duodecim.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"23 1","pages":"547 - 563"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81878816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper posits a relationship between the sensory modality of touch, including a sense of active movement, and early modern knowledge of active powers in nature. It seeks to appreciate the strength and appeal of knowledge built on the active-passive distinction, including that which was retrospectively labeled animist. Using statements by Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Stahl, rather than detailed new readings of texts, the paper asks whether scholars drew on phenomenal, or conscious, awareness of activity as effort encountering resistance when they reasoned about activity in the world. How were there relations and analogies between descriptions of psyche’s relation to body, of the relation of living forces to matter, of relations among material objects, of God’s relationship to His creation, and of relations involving causal agency generally? It is possible to understand what were later called animistic theories as belonging to the mainstream of the new natural philosophy, not to a residue of unscientific argument. Early modern theories of active and vital powers cannot be dismissed because they were based, in error, on mere analogy to human action. Rather, they had a central position in reasoning grounded in phenomenal awareness of action-resistance when a person is “in touch.”
{"title":"The Senses of Touch and Movement and the Argument for Active Powers","authors":"Roger Smith","doi":"10.1086/713086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713086","url":null,"abstract":"The paper posits a relationship between the sensory modality of touch, including a sense of active movement, and early modern knowledge of active powers in nature. It seeks to appreciate the strength and appeal of knowledge built on the active-passive distinction, including that which was retrospectively labeled animist. Using statements by Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Stahl, rather than detailed new readings of texts, the paper asks whether scholars drew on phenomenal, or conscious, awareness of activity as effort encountering resistance when they reasoned about activity in the world. How were there relations and analogies between descriptions of psyche’s relation to body, of the relation of living forces to matter, of relations among material objects, of God’s relationship to His creation, and of relations involving causal agency generally? It is possible to understand what were later called animistic theories as belonging to the mainstream of the new natural philosophy, not to a residue of unscientific argument. Early modern theories of active and vital powers cannot be dismissed because they were based, in error, on mere analogy to human action. Rather, they had a central position in reasoning grounded in phenomenal awareness of action-resistance when a person is “in touch.”","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"1 1","pages":"679 - 699"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89568154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay deals with Girolamo Fracastoro’s ensouled cosmology. His Homocentrica sive de stellis (1538), an astronomy of concentric spheres, was discussed by the Padua School of Aristotelians. Since the polemics over the immortality of the human soul, which had famously opposed Pomponazzi to Nifo, psychological discussions—including those about heavenly spheres’ souls—raised heated controversies. Fracastoro discussed the foundations of his homocentric planetary theory in a dialogue titled Fracastorius, sive de anima (1555). In a 1531 exchange with Gasparo Contarini, Fracastoro discussed celestial physics, including problems linked to mathematical analysis of physical causation. Contarini expressed his doubts over Fracastoro’s lack of consideration of Aristotelian viewpoints on heavenly souls and intelligences. Fracastoro offered an account of cosmic animation in his later dialogue “On the Soul,” taking a different path than his Paduan teachers. He picked up the Platonic idea of the “world soul,” freely connecting it with Aristotelian views about the ensouled cosmos of concentric spheres, resulting in an eclectic composition of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Averroistic elements. Fracastoro grounded his renewed mathematical astronomy on an understanding of the cosmos as a living whole. His animated homocentric cosmos represented a development of Aristotelian premises and a step beyond this legacy.
本文论述吉罗拉莫·弗拉卡斯托罗的灵魂宇宙论。他的同心圆理论(1538年)被帕多瓦学派的亚里士多德所讨论。自从关于人类灵魂不朽的争论以来,心理学的讨论——包括那些关于天体灵魂的讨论——引发了激烈的争论。弗拉卡斯托罗在一篇名为《弗拉卡斯托罗,巨大的生命》(1555)的对话中讨论了他的同心圆行星理论的基础。在1531年与加斯帕罗·康塔里尼的一次交流中,弗拉卡斯托罗讨论了天体物理学,包括与物理因果关系的数学分析有关的问题。孔塔里尼对弗拉卡斯托洛缺乏考虑亚里士多德关于天堂灵魂和智慧的观点表示怀疑。弗拉卡斯托罗在他后来的对话《论灵魂》(On the Soul)中提供了一种宇宙动画的描述,与他的帕多瓦老师走了一条不同的道路。他接受了柏拉图关于“世界灵魂”的观点,自由地将其与亚里士多德关于同心圆的充满灵魂的宇宙的观点联系起来,从而形成了柏拉图、亚里士多德和阿威罗伊主义元素的折衷组合。弗拉卡斯托罗将他更新的数学天文学建立在对宇宙作为一个活生生的整体的理解之上。他那充满活力的同心宇宙代表了亚里士多德前提的发展,并超越了这一遗产。
{"title":"Heavenly Animation as the Foundation for Fracastoro’s Homocentrism: Aristotelian-Platonic Eclecticism beyond the School of Padua","authors":"P. Omodeo","doi":"10.1086/714349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/714349","url":null,"abstract":"This essay deals with Girolamo Fracastoro’s ensouled cosmology. His Homocentrica sive de stellis (1538), an astronomy of concentric spheres, was discussed by the Padua School of Aristotelians. Since the polemics over the immortality of the human soul, which had famously opposed Pomponazzi to Nifo, psychological discussions—including those about heavenly spheres’ souls—raised heated controversies. Fracastoro discussed the foundations of his homocentric planetary theory in a dialogue titled Fracastorius, sive de anima (1555). In a 1531 exchange with Gasparo Contarini, Fracastoro discussed celestial physics, including problems linked to mathematical analysis of physical causation. Contarini expressed his doubts over Fracastoro’s lack of consideration of Aristotelian viewpoints on heavenly souls and intelligences. Fracastoro offered an account of cosmic animation in his later dialogue “On the Soul,” taking a different path than his Paduan teachers. He picked up the Platonic idea of the “world soul,” freely connecting it with Aristotelian views about the ensouled cosmos of concentric spheres, resulting in an eclectic composition of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Averroistic elements. Fracastoro grounded his renewed mathematical astronomy on an understanding of the cosmos as a living whole. His animated homocentric cosmos represented a development of Aristotelian premises and a step beyond this legacy.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"42 1","pages":"585 - 603"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86108809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
What is life, and where does it come from? The question is very old, but it reemerged in the seventeenth century with the crisis of the Aristotelian-Galenic paradigm. Matter was now stripped of any impulse and capacity for self-organization; therefore, it was necessary to find something that would take into account the strength and information that it seemed to hold, especially in what were considered vital phenomena. Georg Ernst Stahl and Friedrich Hoffmann, both professors in Halle and responsible for two of the most famous medical systems of the first half of the eighteenth century, offered solutions to the problem that only appear to be very different. The first invoked the soul as an ideal place of production of the energy that allowed the human body to fight the putrefactive forces in the natural world; the second referred to the concept of ether, to which he attributed modes of action basically similar to those that tradition attributed to vegetative and sensitive souls. This paper highlights the positions of the two physicians, setting them in the climate of the revisitation of ancient certainties that characterized natural philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
什么是生命,生命从何而来?这个问题很老了,但它在17世纪随着亚里士多德-盖伦范式的危机而重新出现。物质现在失去了自我组织的冲动和能力;因此,有必要找到一种方法,考虑到它似乎具有的力量和信息,特别是在被认为是至关重要的现象中。乔治·恩斯特·斯塔尔(Georg Ernst Stahl)和弗里德里希·霍夫曼(Friedrich Hoffmann)都是哈雷大学的教授,负责18世纪上半叶两个最著名的医疗体系,他们为这个问题提供了看似非常不同的解决方案。第一种是将灵魂作为生产能量的理想场所,使人体能够与自然界的腐朽力量作斗争;第二个是乙醚的概念,他认为乙醚的行为方式与传统上认为植物性和敏感灵魂的行为方式基本相似。这篇论文强调了两位医生的立场,将他们置于十七世纪和十八世纪自然哲学特征的古代确定性的重访气氛中。
{"title":"Matter Is Not Enough","authors":"Francesco Paolo de Ceglia","doi":"10.1086/713085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713085","url":null,"abstract":"What is life, and where does it come from? The question is very old, but it reemerged in the seventeenth century with the crisis of the Aristotelian-Galenic paradigm. Matter was now stripped of any impulse and capacity for self-organization; therefore, it was necessary to find something that would take into account the strength and information that it seemed to hold, especially in what were considered vital phenomena. Georg Ernst Stahl and Friedrich Hoffmann, both professors in Halle and responsible for two of the most famous medical systems of the first half of the eighteenth century, offered solutions to the problem that only appear to be very different. The first invoked the soul as an ideal place of production of the energy that allowed the human body to fight the putrefactive forces in the natural world; the second referred to the concept of ether, to which he attributed modes of action basically similar to those that tradition attributed to vegetative and sensitive souls. This paper highlights the positions of the two physicians, setting them in the climate of the revisitation of ancient certainties that characterized natural philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"35 1","pages":"502 - 527"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88519177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}