Research in logic at Old Vilnius University is interpreted as exhibiting an integrative, multilayered and multicultural spirit of tolerance in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in Vilnius, in particular. This article focuses on synthetic conceptions of universals and of the object of scientific knowledge as found in the works of Vilnius University professors M. Smiglecki and D. Ortiz. Their conception of universalia was an intermediate variant between realism and nominalism, affirming universal nature to exist in rebus inasmuch as it (...) is cognized by intellect. The object of scientia likewise connected aspects of various epistemological positions. The result of such syntheses was the assertion that, purely theoretically, it is possible to cognize particularity as well as generality in a scientific way, yet practically, the only real object of science is generality. The above-mentioned conception of universals became quite influential in the European context of scholastic logic and philosophy, whereas the conception of the object of science did not receive a great deal of attention. (shrink)

William Gilbert’s 1600 book, De magnete, greatly influenced early modern natural philosophy. The book describes an impressive array of physical experiments, but it also advances a metaphysical view at odds with the soon to emerge mechanical philosophy. That view was animism. I distinguish two kinds of animism – Aristotelian and Platonic – and argue that Gilbert was an Aristotelian animist. Taking Robert Boyle as an example, I then show that early modern arguments against animism were often effective only against Platonic (...) animism. In fact, unacknowledged traces of Aristotelian animism can be found in Boyle’s mechanical account of nature. This was Gilbert’s legacy. (shrink)

Newton’s Regulae philosophandi—the rules for reasoning in natural philosophy—are maxims of causal reasoning and induction. This essay reviews their significance for Newton’s method of inquiry, as well as their application to particular propositions within the Principia. Two main claims emerge. First, the rules are not only interrelated, they defend various facets of the same core idea: that nature is simple and orderly by divine decree, and that, consequently, human beings can be justified in inferring universal causes from limited phenomena, if (...) only fallibly. Second, the rules make substantive ontological assumptions on which Newton’s argument in the Principia relies. (shrink)