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This volume explores the themes of vanishing matter, matter and the laws of nature, the qualities of matter, and the diversity of the debates about matter in the early modern period. Chapters are unified by a number of interlocking themes which together enable some of the broader contours of the philosophy of matter to be charted in new ways.
List of contents
Part I. Cartesian Matter 1. The Vanishing Nature of Body in Descartes's Natural Philosophy.
Mihnea Dobre 2.
The New Matter Theory and its Epistemology: Descartes (and Late Scholastics) on Hypotheses and Moral Certainty.
Roger Ariew Part II. Matter, Mechanism, and Medicine 3. Post-Cartesian Atomism: the Case of François Bernier.
Vlad Alexandrescu 4. The Matter of Medicine: New Medical Matter Theories in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England.
Peter Anstey 5.
Without God: Gravity as a Relational Quality of Matter in Newton's Treatise.
Eric Schliesser Part III. Matter and the Laws of Motion 6. The Cartesians of the Royal Society: The Debate Over Collisions and the Nature of Body (1669-1670).
Dana Jalobeanu 7.
On Composite Systems: Descartes, Newton, and the Law-Constitutive Approach.
Katherine Brading 8.
Huygens, Wren, Wallis, and Newton on Rules of Impact and Reflection.
Gemma Murray, William Harper, and Curtis Wilson Part IV: Leibniz and Hume 9. Leibniz, Body, and Monads.
Daniel Garber 10. Leibniz on Void and Matter.
Sorin Costreie 11.
Hume on the Distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities.
Jani Hakkarainen
About the author
Dana Jalobeanu is Lecturer in Philosophy and program director at the research center
Foundations of Early Modernity at the University of Bucharest. Her current research focuses on the emergence of early modern experimental philosophy, with a special interest in the writings of Francis Bacon and their reception. She is the author of
The Invention of Modernity: Natural Philosophy and Theology in the Seventeenth Century (in Romanian), Cluj: Napoca Star, 2006.
Peter R. Anstey is the inaugural Professor of Early Modern Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago. His research focuses on early modern philosophy with special reference to the writings of John Locke and Robert Boyle. He is the author of
The Philosophy of Robert Boyle, London: Routledge, 2000.
Summary
This volume explores the themes of vanishing matter, matter and the laws of nature, the qualities of matter, and the diversity of the debates about matter in the early modern period. Chapters are unified by a number of interlocking themes which together enable some of the broader contours of the philosophy of matter to be charted in new ways.
