The Aristotelian Tradition and the Rise of British Empiricism - Logic and Epistemology in the British Isles (1570-1689)

Offers an extremely bold, far-reaching, and unsuspected thesis in the history of philosophy: Aristotelianism was a dominant movement of the British philosophical landscape, especially in the field of logic, and it had a long survival. British Aristotelian doctrines were strongly empiricist in nature, both in the theory of knowledge and in scientific method; this character marked and influenced further developments in British philosophy at the end of the century, and eventually gave rise to what we now call British empiricism, which is represented by philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Beyond the apparent and explicit criticism of the old Scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy, which has been very well recognized by the scholarship in the twentieth century and which has contributed to the false notion that early modern philosophy emerged as a reaction to Aristotelianism, the present research examines the continuity, the original developments and the impact of Aristotelian doctrines and terminology in logic and epistemology as the background for the rise of empiricism.Without the Aristotelian tradition, without its doctrines, and without its conceptual elaborations, British empiricism would never have been born. The book emphasizes that philosophy is not defined only by the 'great names', but also by minor authors, who determine the intellectual milieu from which the canonical names emerge. It considers every single published work of logic between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century, being acquainted with a number of surviving manuscripts and being well-informed about the best existing scholarship in the field.

List of contents

1 Introduction.- 2 Logic in the British Isles during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.- 3 Logic in the Universities of the British Isles.- 4 Zabarella's Empiricism5 Early Aristotelianism between Humanism and Ramism.- the British School7 Continental Aristotelians in the British Isles.- 8 The Empiricism of the Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism.- 9. The Reformers of Aristotelian Logic.- 10 Late Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism.- 11 Conclusion.- Bibliography.-Index

Summary

Offers an extremely bold, far-reaching, and unsuspected thesis in the history of philosophy: Aristotelianism was a dominant movement of the British philosophical landscape, especially in the field of logic, and it had a long survival. British Aristotelian doctrines were strongly empiricist in nature, both in the theory of knowledge and in scientific method; this character marked and influenced further developments in British philosophy at the end of the century, and eventually gave rise to what we now call British empiricism, which is represented by philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Beyond the apparent and explicit criticism of the old Scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy, which has been very well recognized by the scholarship in the twentieth century and which has contributed to the false notion that early modern philosophy emerged as a reaction to Aristotelianism, the present research examines the continuity, the original developments and the impact of Aristotelian doctrines and terminology in logic and epistemology as the background for the rise of empiricism.Without the Aristotelian tradition, without its doctrines, and without its conceptual elaborations, British empiricism would never have been born. The book emphasizes that philosophy is not defined only by the ‘great names’, but also by minor authors, who determine the intellectual milieu from which the canonical names emerge. It considers every single published work of logic between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century, being acquainted with a number of surviving manuscripts and being well-informed about the best existing scholarship in the field.  ​

Additional text

From the reviews:
“Marco Sgarbi offers a detailed examination of the epistemology and methodologies propounded by the logic textbooks in use at both Oxford and Cambridge … . Sgarbi has done sterling work in surveying the neglected logic texts of the period. The great value of his study is its detailed examination of these humble textbooks and his demonstration of their value as a source in the history of philosophy. For that reason it will be a valuable point of reference for all historians of early modern philosophy.” (Sarah Hutton, Intellectual History Review, October, 2013)
“Sgarbi, who has read the works of Ricardo Pozzo carefully, has written a book with a title that will command immediate attention from a wide range of historians and philosophers of early modern science. … Sgarbi’s energetic researches have produced a fairly thorough work in which nearly every printed English logic textbook is dealt with. … The book will be very welcome as introducing a necessary and very helpful nuancing to the views of the development of empiricism … .” (Daniel C. Anderson, Journal of Early Modern Studies, Vol. 2 (2), 2013)

Report

From the reviews:
"Marco Sgarbi offers a detailed examination of the epistemology and methodologies propounded by the logic textbooks in use at both Oxford and Cambridge ... . Sgarbi has done sterling work in surveying the neglected logic texts of the period. The great value of his study is its detailed examination of these humble textbooks and his demonstration of their value as a source in the history of philosophy. For that reason it will be a valuable point of reference for all historians of early modern philosophy." (Sarah Hutton, Intellectual History Review, October, 2013)
"Sgarbi, who has read the works of Ricardo Pozzo carefully, has written a book with a title that will command immediate attention from a wide range of historians and philosophers of early modern science. ... Sgarbi's energetic researches have produced a fairly thorough work in which nearly every printed English logic textbook is dealt with. ... The book will be very welcome as introducing a necessary and very helpful nuancing to the views of the development of empiricism ... ." (Daniel C. Anderson, Journal of Early Modern Studies, Vol. 2 (2), 2013)

Product details

• Authors: Marco Sgarbi
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 29.05.2012
• EAN: 9789400749504
• ISBN: 978-94-0-074950-4
• No. of pages: 260
• Dimensions: 162 mm x 22 mm x 245 mm
• Weight: 548 g
• Illustrations: XII, 260 p.
• Series: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science; Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; B, Logic, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, History of Philosophy, Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and science, Philosophy: logic