The title of this book by the late Joyce Cary suggests that some theory of the relations between art and reality will be propounded. Such in fact is the case, but it is not a theory of aesthetics in the comprehensive sense—nothing so rigidly ambitious as Maritain’s book on Creative Intuition. This book is based on the Clark Lectures for 1956 and on some Oxford lectures on the novel given in 1952. It is the kind of very English book which (...) Continental aestheticians tend to despise—the general theory so loosely jointed together, the analogies drawn between the arts so superficial, the many lacunae left gaping in the structure. If however one shares the English critical tradition it will certainly be found a more meaningful book than a flock of the other kind. (shrink)

This is a stimulating but maddening book, for the author opens the gate on several fascinating avenues of thought but does not give himself time to explore them for any great distance. It could have been a much more important book of its kind for it is the seminal kind badly needed in Christian circles at the moment. It attempts to build bridges between certain areas of life and thought recently discovered to be virtually sealed off from each other—notably between (...) liturgical cultus, secular culture and modern industrial society. From ‘an explicitly Catholic angle’ but in very fresh terms it links together the liturgical movement, Scriptural studies and the Church’s social teaching and suggests new perspectives so that these may open up freely to one another. (shrink)

This is a ‘study of Liberal Humanism in the novels of George Eliot, Henry James, E M Forster, Virginia Woolf and Angus Wilson’. The ‘free spirit’ is the person who, ‘freed’ of traditional or customary morality, has to learn an empirical or consequential morality in relations with other people and reconcile this with self-fulfilment as a new and conscious ideal. Such a spirit typifies the offspring of J S Mill and the liberal middle-class culture of the late nineteenth century with (...) its reliance on historical progress, the power of reason, tolerance and individual freedom. The dilemma of the contemporary liberal is summarised in an introductory chapter which does not however attempt any analysis more radical than the usual one. When the international conflicts of the twentieth century undermined its confidence liberalism lost its creative energy in the fields of political action and social reform, yet many middle-class people of liberal bent still retain in their private lives amidst an alien society a liberal-humanist morality of personal relationships worked out according to the motives and foreseen consequences of their actions. Certain characters and themes handled by the above line of novelists show their awareness of this liberal programme and its complications. (shrink)

It is a pleasure to be able to pay tribute to Adam Potkay’s interesting and impressive book on two of the most important figures in the eighteenth century. It brings together the philosophical and the literary, the “anatomist” and the “painter” of the passions and the moral life, integrating worlds that, however isolated they may have become in the twentieth century, were not seen as all that distinct in the eighteenth. Having said this, the most remarkable feature of Potkay’s book (...) is that it unites two figures usually thought to be opposed—the irascible, domineering, and deeply Christian Johnson and the dispassionate, moderate, and pagan Hume. (shrink)

Peter Anstey presents a thorough and innovative study of John Locke's views on the method and content of natural philosophy. Focusing on Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding, but also drawing extensively from his other writings and manuscript remains, Anstey argues that Locke was an advocate of the Experimental Philosophy: the new approach to natural philosophy championed by Robert Boyle and the early Royal Society who were opposed to speculative philosophy. On the question of method, Anstey shows how Locke's pessimism (...) about the prospects for a demonstrative science of nature led him, in the Essay, to promote Francis Bacon's method of natural history, and to downplay the value of hypotheses and analogical reasoning in science. But, according to Anstey, Locke never abandoned the ideal of a demonstrative natural philosophy, for he believed that if we could discover the primary qualities of the tiny corpuscles that constitute material bodies, we could then establish a kind of corpuscular metric that would allow us a genuine science of nature. It was only after the publication of the Essay, however, that Locke came to realize that Newton's Principia provided a model for the role of demonstrative reasoning in science based on principles established upon observation, and this led him to make significant revisions to his views in the 1690s. On the content of Locke's natural philosophy, it is argued that even though Locke adhered to the Experimental Philosophy, he was not averse to speculation about the corpuscular nature of matter. Anstey takes us into new terrain and new interpretations of Locke's thought in his explorations of his mercurialist transmutational chymistry, his theory of generation by seminal principles, and his conventionalism about species. (shrink)

This article examines the views of René Descartes, Robert Boyle, and John Locke on essence and kinds and outlines the polemical stances that motivate and direct each of their views. It describes the ontological categories to which they subscribed and their own speculative theories about the actual kinds in the world. It categories to which they subscribed and their own speculative theories about the actual kinds in the world and discusses the late-Aristotelian theory of substantial forms.

This volume collects together for the very first time a record of the key readings which comprise the three principal traditions or methodologies of Nietzsche interpretation: the Anglo-American, German, and French traditions.

The emergence of experimental philosophy was one of the most significant developments in the early modern period. However, it is often overlooked in modern scholarship, despite being associated with leading figures such as Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, David Hume and Christian Wolff. Ranging from the early Royal Society of London in the seventeenth century to the uptake of experimental philosophy in Paris and Berlin in the eighteenth, this book provides new terms of reference for (...) understanding early modern philosophy and science, and its eventual eclipse in the shadow of post-Kantian notions of empiricism and rationalism. Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism is an integrated history of early modern experimental philosophy which challenges the rationalism and empiricism historiography that has dominated Anglophone history of philosophy for more than a century. (shrink)

This book presents the first integrated treatment of the philosophy of Robert Boyle, one of the leading English natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution.

Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind is one of a handful of texts that began the physicalist revolution in the philosophy of mind. In this collection, distinguished philosophers examine what we still owe to it, how to expand it, as well as looking back on how it came about.

This paper argues that, contrary to the claims of Alan Chalmers, Boyle understood his experimental work to be intimately related to his mechanical philosophy. Its central claim is that the mechanical philosophy has a heuristic structure that motivates and gives direction to Boyle's experimental programme. Boyle was able to delimit the scope of possible explanations of any phenomenon by positing both that all qualities are ultimately reducible to a select group of mechanical qualities and that all explanations of natural phenomena (...) are to be in terms of the operations of machines and are to appeal only to qualities that are already familiar. This is illustrated by his investigations into the Torricellian experiment. Boyle's explanation of the elevation of the mercurial cylinder by appeal to the spring of the air was an intermediate mechanical explanation. Boyle was convinced that the spring of the air was ultimately reducible to the mechanical qualities. This in turn had implications for his research into the cause of respiration. In a move that was both parsimonious and consistent with the broad requirements of the mechanical philosophy, Boyle was able to solve the problem of the cause of the inflow of air into the lungs by appeal to his research in pneumatics. This application of a mechanical explanation in pneumatics to physiology is just what one would expect if the mechanical philosophy was as universal as Boyle claimed it to be. Therefore, far from Boyle's experiments having a life of their own, they were clearly directed by and understood in terms of the mechanical philosophy.Keywords: Air-pump; Boyle; Chalmers; Experiment; Explanation; Mechanism. (shrink)

This paper argues that the construction of natural histories, as advocated by Francis Bacon, played a central role in John Locke's conception of method in natural philosophy. It presents new evidence in support of John Yolton's claim that "the emphasis upon compiling natural histories of bodies ... was the chief aspect of the Royal Society's programme that attracted Locke, and from which we need to understand his science of nature". Locke's exposure to the natural philosophy of Robert Boyle, the medical (...) philosophy of Thomas Sydenham, his interest in travel literature and his conception of the division of the sciences are examined. From this survey, a cumulative case is presented which establishes, independently of an in-depth exegesis of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the central role for Locke of the construction of natural histories in natural philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter examines Francis Bacon's influence on Buffon's and Diderot's conceptions of natural history.

This paper offers critical reflection on the contemporary tendency to approach health care in instrumentalist terms. Instrumentalism is means-ends rationality. In contemporary society, the instrumentalist attitude is exemplified by the relationship between individual consumer and a provider of goods and services. The problematic nature of this attitude is illustrated by Michael Oakeshott’s conceptions of enterprise association and civil association. Enterprise association is instrumental; civil association is association in terms of an ethically delineated realm of practices. The latter offers a richer (...) ethical conception of the relation between person and society than instrumentalism does. Oakeshott’s conception is further illustrated by reflection on the connection between morality and religion that he explores in an early essay concerning “religious sensibility”. Religious sensibility turns on the acknowledgement of the vulnerability of the self to the vicissitudes of life. This vulnerability cannot be bargained over instrumentally without imperilling the self. Religious sensibility is thus a valuable resource for criticising instrumentalist attitudes. It allows for the cultivation of ethical self-understanding that is essential to comprehending the conditions in virtue of which genuine civil life is possible. These conditions need to be taken into account in health care. Health care is not simply about substantive wants. It also necessarily concerns the universal and constant condition of being prey to illness that is the common lot of all citizens. (shrink)

This collection presents the first sustained examination of the nature and status of the idea of principles in early modern thought. Principles are almost ubiquitous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the term appears in famous book titles, such as Newton’s _Principia_; the notion plays a central role in the thought of many leading philosophers, such as Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason; and many of the great discoveries of the period, such as the Law of Gravitational Attraction, were described as (...) principles. Ranging from mathematics and law to chemistry, from natural and moral philosophy to natural theology, and covering some of the leading thinkers of the period, this volume presents ten compelling new essays that illustrate the centrality and importance of the idea of principles in early modern thought. It contains chapters by leading scholars in the field, including the Leibniz scholar Daniel Garber and the historian of chemistry William R. Newman, as well as exciting, emerging scholars, such as the Newton scholar Kirsten Walsh and a leading expert on experimental philosophy, Alberto Vanzo. _The Idea of Principles in Early Modern Thought_ charts the terrain of one of the period’s central concepts for the first time, and opens up new lines for further research. (shrink)

Early modern experimental philosophers were opposed to speculation, and yet many endorsed speculative theories. This chapter gives a partial explanation of why this is so, using Robert Boyle’s acceptance and promotion of the corpuscular philosophy as a case study. It argues that, in addition to furnishing experimental evidence for the corpuscular hypothesis in his Forms and Qualities, Boyle attempted to establish its epistemic superiority over other speculative theories on the grounds that it is founded upon superior principles. In his ‘Excellency (...) and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis’, Boyle claims that the principles of the corpuscular philosophy are more intelligible, more parsimonious, ontologically primary, simpler and more comprehensive than those of its rivals. On grounds of comparative plausibility then, according to Boyle, the corpuscular philosophy is eminently preferable to its rivals. The final section of the chapter traces the legacy of Boyle’s appraisal of the epistemic status of the corpuscular philosophy in the writings of many of his compatriots from the mid-1660s to the Cyclopedia of Ephraim Chambers of 1728. (shrink)

Layers in Husserl's Phenomenology situates Husserl firmly within the trajectory of later Continental thought and contributes to the recent reconsideration of Husserl as a legitimate precursor to the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida.

This paper argues that, while Locke’s unstable usage of the term ‘mind’ prevents us from claiming that he had a theory of mind, it can still be said that he made a contribution to the philosophy of mind in its contemporary sense. After establishing that it was the term ‘soul’ that predominated in early modern British philosophy, the paper turns to Locke’s three central notions of the soul, the understanding, and the person. It is argued that there are two stages (...) to the development of Locke’s view of the soul: a first philosophical stage and a later theological stage. The first stage is characterized by the application of the material/immaterial distinction. The second stage rejects the utility of this distinction. The two stages are not, however, incompatible, for the bridge between them is found in Locke’s conceptions of the understanding and personhood. While the latter theological stage was, in the end, of the greatest concern to Locke, it is in the earlier philosophical stage that we find his real contribution to what we now call the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This paper presents a comprehensive study of Robert Boyle’s writings on seminal principles or seeds. It examines the role of seeds in Boyle’s account of creation, the generation of plants and animals, spontaneous generation, the generation of minerals and disease. By an examination of all of Boyle’s major extant discussions of seeds it is argued that there were discernible changes in Boyle’s views over time. As the years progressed Boyle became more sceptical about the role of seminal principles in the (...) generation of minerals and he came to reject the spontaneous generation of insects and animals from putrefying matter. It is also argued that Boyle’s notion of a generative or ‘plastick’ principle creates a tension within his mechanical philosophy. He appeals to a plastick power in order to explain those phenomena of generation that are beyond the explanatory resources of the corpuscular hypothesis. However, when pressed to explain the nature of this power he either hints, somewhat paradoxically, that it too can be explained mechanically or admits his nescience. (shrink)

This paper argues that the English philosopher John Locke, who has normally been thought to have had only an amateurish interest in botany, was far more involved in the botanical science of his day than has previously been known. Through the presentation of new evidence deriving from Locke’s own herbarium, his manuscript notes, journal and correspondence, it is established that Locke made a modest contribution to early modern botany. It is shown that Locke had close and ongoing relations with the (...) Bobarts, keepers of the Oxford Botanic Garden, and that Locke distributed seeds and plant parts to other botanists, seeds of which the progeny almost certainly ended up in the most important herbaria of the period. Furthermore, it is claimed that the depth of Locke’s interest in and practice of botany has a direct bearing on our understanding of his views on the correct method of natural philosophy and on the interpretation of his well known discussion of the nature of species in Book III of his Essay concerning human understanding. (shrink)

This collection of new essays on John Locke's philosophy provides the most up-to-date entrée into the exciting developments taking place in the study of one of the most important contributors to modern thought. Covering Locke's natural philosophy, his political and moral thought and his philosophy of religion, this book brings together the pioneering work of some of the world's leading Locke scholars.

Two medical essays in the hand of John Locke survive amongst the Shaftesbury Papers in the National Archives (National Archives PRO 30/24/47/2, ff. 31r–38v and ff. 49r–56r). Since the 1960s their authorship has been disputed. Some scholars have attributed them to the London physician Thomas Sydenham, others have attributed them to Locke. Detailed analyses of their contents and the context of their composition provide very strong evidence for Lockean authorship. This is reinforced by the application of the most recent techniques (...) of computational stylistics. (shrink)

This paper analyses the different ways in which Isaac Newton employed queries in his writings on natural philosophy. It is argued that queries were used in three different ways by Newton and that each of these uses is best understood against the background of the role that queries played in the Baconian method that was adopted by the leading experimenters of the early Royal Society. After a discussion of the role of queries in Francis Bacon’s natural historical method, Newton’s queries (...) in his Trinity Notebook are shown to reveal the influence of his early reading in the new experimental philosophy. Then after a discussion of Robert Hooke’s view of the role of queries, the paper turns to an assessment of Newton’s correspondence and Opticks. It is argued that the queries in his correspondence with Oldenburg on his early optical experiments are closely tied to an experimental program, whereas the queries in the Opticks are more discursive and speculative, but that each of these uses of queries represents a significant Baconian legacy in his natural philosophical methodology.Author Keywords: Bacon; Experiment; Hypothesis; Method; Newton; Query. (shrink)