In 1665, Spinoza thought about that, in the western tradition, has been called philosophy: their forms have established specific context about how it must be the knowledge of the things and the men. The war between England and Holland, in 1665, as well as the writing —in course— of Theological-Po..

For the relatively small number of scholars who have worked on him, the English Catholic philosopher, courtier, and pirate Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) has proven a difficult figure to study compre...

Was there a concept of data before the so-called ‘data revolution’? This paper contributes to the history of the concept of data by investigating uses of the term ‘data’ in texts of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions for the period 1665–1886. It surveys how the notion enters the journal as a technical term in mathematics, and charts how over time it expands into various other scientific fields, including Earth sciences, physics and chemistry. The paper argues that in these texts (...) the notion of data is not used merely as a rhetorical category, and also cannot strictly be identified with the category of evidence. Instead, the notion comes with an associated epistemic structure, one that is in line with its development from an early mathematical use. (shrink)

In November 1664, a comet appeared in the European skies; by early March 1665, it had disappeared, but, at this very moment, another comet appeared, which stayed among the stars until mid-April. Observations of these two comets were made all over Europe, and even beyond. Although most secondary literature dedicated to these two comets has been focused on England and Italy, France was not to be outdone in terms of observations, small talk and publications. In this paper, I would (...) like to use the books that were published on these comets in France as a dispersive prism to understand the ongoing controversies about which principles should be accepted in natural philosophy in the mid-sixties. There were indeed several intellectual and institutional circumstances that gave a specific twist to the French debate: the sixties marked the beginning of the war between Jesuits and Cartesians that was to enflame learned France until the late nineties at least, they were also the period of gestation for the future Académie des sciences, and, finally, it is also during these years that French elites began to discredit systematically the practice of astrology as a popular superstition. My working hypothesis in this paper is that, in such circumstances, the two comets of 1664–1665 were an occasion for each camp to advocate publicly its positions about the proper principles for natural philosophy. By natural philosophical principles, I mean both ontological and epistemological principles. (shrink)

This book examines the philosophical and scientific achievements of Sir Kenelm Digby, a successful English diplomat, privateer and natural philosopher of the mid-1600s. Not widely remembered today, Digby is one of the most intriguing figures in the history of early modern philosophers. Among scholars, he is known for his attempt to reconcile what perhaps seem to be irreconcilable philosophical frameworks: Aristotelianism and early modern mechanism. This contributed volume offers the first full-length treatment of Digby’s work and of the unique position (...) he occupied in early modern intellectual history. It explores key aspects of Digby’s metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical method, and offers a new appraisal of his contributions to early modern natural philosophy and mathematics. A dozen contributors offer their expert insight into such topics as Body, quantity, and measures in Digby's natural philosophy Ecumenism and common notions in Digby Aristotelianism and accidents in Digby's philosophy Digby on body and soul Digby on method and experiments This book volume will be of benefit to a broad audience of scholars, educators, and students of the history of early modern science and philosophy. (shrink)

Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) was an aristocratic English Catholic philosopher who has been the subject of several recent studies, each of which has sought to demonstrate his intellectual originalit...

Abstract:This paper seeks to understand the rise and fall of passive voice in the publications of the Royal Society from 1665 to 2020. Though it came to be seen as the very voice of scientific objectivity, passive voice remained in the clear ascendency for just over a century. The rise of passive voice coincided with the progressively diminished role of an observer who directly apprehends the world through the senses. The recent re-emergence of active voice is more of a (...) puzzle. I argue that the unsettled history of voice reflects the unsettled relationship of science to agency and conscious experience. (shrink)

Johannes Clauberg has always been recognized as an important figure between the new and the antique philosophy, but little has been done to assess his significance. The volume edited by Theo Verbeek is the first aimed at exploring Clauberg’s position with respect to Cartesianism and the ramifications of his own arguments. It contains the papers delivered at a colloquium in Groningen in 1995. A first group of articles deals with Clauberg’s first metaphysical construction, his Ontosophia. Ulrich Gottfried Leinsle examines the (...) sources of the Ontosophia in the Pansophia of Comenius, V. Carraud investigates the variants of the various editions of the Ontosophia until 1664 outlining the difficulties of conciliating ontology and theory of subjectivity, Jean-Christophe Bardout its impact on Malebranche, and Jean École on Wolff. A second group of articles deals with problems of knowledge. Aza Goudriaan writes about Clauberg’s position on the knowledge of God, L. Spruit on perceptual knowledge, and Detlev Pätzold on causality. Claude Weber delves into Clauberg’s attempt of providing a systematic description of the etymology of the German language, Theo Verbeek into Clauberg’s activity as a teacher of Descartes’s Principia philosophiae, and Christia Mercer into Clauberg’s notion of corporeal substance. Michael Albrecht, finally, considers the impact of Clauberg’s work from the peculiar and nonetheless very proper standpoint of “eclectic philosophy.” A biographical and bibliographical sketch by Theo Verbeek concludes the volume. (shrink)

The reconstruction of ensemble d–f of the Akhmîm Papyrus, better known as the Strasbourg Papyrus, which attests approximately eighteen of the over seventy new lines of Empedocles’ physical poem, has drawn the attention of scholars over recent years. Thanks to the good condition of the papyrus and the coincidence with two Empedoclean lines, already known from the indirect tradition, ensemble d–f 1–10a presents a well-restored text and an intelligible sense. In contrast, because of the damaged state of the papyrus, the (...) restoration of d–f 10b–18 is more complicated. These lines seem to describe a life-generative process, but what process was Empedocles talking about? Some resemblances between these papyrus lines and the lines of another Empedoclean fragment, DK 31 B 62, have suggested to scholars, notably to A. Martin and O. Primavesi in 1999 and M. Rashed in 2011, that the lines of the papyrus depict, just like DK 31 B 62, the generation of whole-natured beings. Other scholars, however, such as R. Janko in 2004 and A. Laks and G.W. Most in 2016, show more caution and leave the possibility open that Empedocles is here talking about the generation of something else. (shrink)

The appearance of scientific journals in the second half of the seventeenth century not only presented new opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge, but also offers the historian a privileged view of the shared knowledge within the scientific community. The Journal des Sçavans, founded in 1665, proclaimed its ambition to disseminate news about books and people concerning the République des lettres. Given the reportedly high interest in and opposition to the rise of Cartesianism among contemporary philosophers, this paper explores (...) the discussion of Cartesianism within the pages of the Journal. It is shown that debates on Cartesianism formed only a small portion of the articles in the Journal. Although the majority of commentaries referred to the metaphysical foundations of Cartesian philosophy, a considerable number of instances were found referring to empirical tests of the theory. Finally, as the Journal does not mention the condemnations or censorship of Cartesianism, we cannot speak of a general feeling of hostility against Cartesian philosophers among the editors or intended audience of the Journal. (shrink)

The book reviews of the early Philosophical Transactions have not been considered a dominant feature of the journal, and thus more research is needed to enrich our understanding of them. This paper begins this process by describing some of the basic features of the reviews, before moving on to address the issue of how they were composed. The specific focus here is on how Henry Oldenburg’s correspondence influenced the process in various ways. As it turns out, there are episodes when (...) Oldenburg’s exchanges impacted the timing, length, content, form, and sometimes even the very existence of the book reviews. It thus seems that these reviews were rooted just as much in epistolary correspondence as other texts published in the Transactions. (shrink)

SummaryThis article aims at exploring Japan and its cultural and symbolic representation in the Republic of Letters from the end of the seventeenth century until the mid-eighteenth century. In order to do this, the article focuses on early modern scholarly journals, as they were the most comprehensive and up-to-date instruments of communication for the international community of scholars during that time. By analysing the journals’ content we will see which topics were more commonly connected to Japan and understand the role (...) Japan played in the development of the increasingly comprehensive and methodical knowledge of the early modern savants. This article provides a picture of the heuristic and rhetorical role of Japan in the shaping of new, expanded representations of the world. On the one hand, connections between the cultural representations of Japan and other extra-European lands are highlighted; on the other hand, Japan's peculiar and unique features within the cultural and scientific discourses of the Republic of Letters are examined. Finally, how the representations of Japan relate to the divisions and identities within the Republic of Letters itself is considered. (shrink)

Michel de Certeau has analysed the historical context of the debated 'new devotion to Saint Joseph' among the young generation of Jesuits in the first decades of the seventeenth century. This devotion appears to have been of great symbolic value since, in a hidden way, it refers to the contemplative, mystical life. One of the protagonists of the debate, the French Jesuit mystic Jean-Joseph Surin , offers his own analysis of the crisis of mysticism in the Jesuit Order. In his (...) view, some members of the Order fundamentally misunderstand the content of the mystical experience. Seen in a broader perspective, these miscomprehensions can be explained by the incapability to understand the idea of the ‘indwelling’ of Christ in the human person, erroneously understood as a merging of both. The nominalistic concept of the human person as an individual is probably responsible for this intellectual incapacity. (shrink)

Kenelm Digby was among the first authors in England to embrace Cartesianism. Yet Digby’s approach to the mind–body problem was irenic: in his massive Two treatises (Paris, 1644), the author advocates a corpuscular philosophy that is applied to physical bodies, whereas the intellectual capacities of human beings remain inexplicable through the powers of matter. The aim of the present article is to highlight the (rather reticent) relationship of Digby’s corpuscularism with doctrines of spirits in connection with the Renaissance Neoplatonic tradition. (...) Not uncommon in seventeenth-century natural philosophies, such “spirits” are notoriously evasive entities: half spirit, half matter acting as mediators between the realms of bodies and souls. This article suggests that Digby sought to preserve the inveterate ideas of a universal spiritus and a world soul and, in particular, that Kenelm Digby translated (rather than “overcame”) Marsilio Ficino’s (1433–1499) spiritus doctrines into the language of seventeenth-century corpuscularism. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to present historiographical analysis of researches of Russian historians of the XIX - early XX centuries. The view point of Russian scientists on hetman I. Briukhovetsky and his activities is considered. Common features in their concepts are revealed. The proposed by the Russian historians motivation of the hetman`s activity is analyzed. Russian historians paid attention to the visit of I. Briukhovetsky to Moscow in 1665 (the first ever visit of Ukrainian hetman of the (...) Russian capital), and to the hetman`s "petition", which contained the request for limitation of Ukrainian autonomy. S. Solovyev, G. Karpov, P. Matveev explained hetman`s action suchwise that he sought to gain outer support in the Moscow government. Approximately the same idea had M.Pokrovsky. S. Solovyev compared I. Briukhovetsky with I. Vyhovsky, who also sought to outer support, but focused not on Russia but on Poland. Thus, Russian historians explained the cause of I. Briukhovetsky`s betrayal as his political mistakes. Russian historians admitted that the revolt at the time was quite natural, as Left-bank Ukraine was dissatisfied with the policy of the royal government. They also considered the death of I. Briukhovetsky to be natural, as he managed to alienate all social layers in Ukraine during his reign, Cossacks as well. (shrink)