This anthology represents the first large-scale attempt to present--and draw some morals and predictions from--the complex history of the concept of matter from Thales and Plato down to Marx and Heisenberg. The Concept of Matter is a collection of twenty-seven papers, each by a philosopher or scientist whose particular contribution to the dialogue on the concept is well known and here summarized and extended. From the symposium held in the fall of 1961 at the University of Notre Dame, Father McMullin (...) has included not only the revised versions of those twenty-seven papers, but also an edited selection of comments and interchanges at the symposium itself--the dialogues of a distinguished gathering, some of the world's greatest scholars. The discussions bridge the concept of matter from the Greek and medieval interpretations through the transformation of the concept of matter into the redefinition of the concept of mass, to finally the dematerialization of matter by "modern science." A study of the evolution of this crucial concept illuminates the interrelation between the philosophical and the scientific approaches to Nature which can be more thoroughly grasped in terms of the development and constantly changing views towards related concepts like matter and mass. Contributors: C. Lejewski, L. Esliek, J. Fitzgerland, J. Owens, N. Luyten, E. McMullin, A. Wolter, M. Fisk, M. B. Hall, C. Taliaferro, M. B. Hesse, C. Mast, J. Smith, A.R. Caponigri, N. Lobkowiez, K. Sayre, R. Rorty, R. Johann, N.R. Hnason, A.E. Woodruff, C. Misner. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his philosophical works he addressed such delicate issues as the role of Christ as mediator and the distinction, in human beings, between soul and matter. This volume presents new translations of Cause, Principle and Unity, in which he challenges Aristotelian accounts of causality and spells out the implications of Copernicanism for (...) a new theory of an infinite universe, and of two essays on magic, On Magic and A General Account of Bonding, in which he interprets earlier theories about magical events in the light of the unusual powers of natural phenomena. (shrink)

This volume is devoted St. Thomas's commentary on the Physics. In the Physics, Aristotle delves into what makes things what they are. In commenting on this fundamental text of Aristotelian philosophy, St. Thomas takes Aristotle's thoughts and deepens them.