scholarly journals English Philosophers and Scottish Academic Philosophy (1660–1700)

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Gellera
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
Henry More

This paper investigates the little-known reception of Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and John Locke in the Scottish universities in the period 1660–1700.The fortune of the English philosophers in the Scottish universities rested on whether their philosophies were consonant with the Scots’ own philosophical agenda. Within the established Cartesian curriculum, the Scottish regents eagerly taught what they thought best in English philosophy (natural philosophy and experimentalism) and criticised what they thought wrong (materialism, contractualism, anti-innatism).The paper also suggests new sources and perspectives for the broader discussion of the ‘origins’ of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Thomas Reid on the Improvement of Knowledge

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-139
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Shrock
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Religion And Ethics ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Thomas Reid often seems distant from other Scottish Enlightenment figures. While Hume, Hutcheson, Kames, and Smith wrestled with the nature of social progress, Reid was busy with natural philosophy and epistemology, stubbornly loyal to traditional religion and ethics, and out of touch with the heart of his own intellectual world. Or was he? I contend that Reid not only engaged the Scottish Enlightenment's concern for improvement, but, as a leading interpreter of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, he also developed a scheme to explain the progress of human knowledge. Pulling thoughts from across Reid's corpus, I identify four key features that Reid uses to distinguish mature sciences from prescientific arts and inquiries. Then, I compare and contrast this scheme with that of Thomas Kuhn in order to highlight the plausibility and originality of Reid's work.

Charleton, Walter (1620–1707)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.A.J. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton

The physician Walter Charleton was the first to introduce Epicurean atomism into England in the form advocated in France by Gassendi. Charleton’s version of atomism, although largely derivative, was nevertheless influential. Together with his advocacy of a Christian hedonism, it helped to make both atomism in natural philosophy (with its associated mechanistic account of nature) and utilitarian theories in ethics acceptable to such thinkers as Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, John Locke and others associated with the foundation of the Royal Society, of which Charleton was himself an active early member.

Newton and Locke

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter R. Anstey
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Trinity

This chapter discusses the friendship and mutual interests of Isaac Newton and the English philosopher John Locke. It is structured around their common interests in chymistry, theology, and natural philosophy. Newton and Locke were both friends of the leading chymist Robert Boyle and much of their correspondence regarding chymistry revolves around him. Their discussions in theology focused on (what we now call) textual criticism of biblical texts that had implications for the doctrine of the Trinity. It is their common interest in natural philosophy, however, that is the most interesting and revealing facet of their relationship. This began with Locke’s review of Newton’s Principia in 1688 and is in evidence in Locke’s Essay and other writings as he came to terms with the Newtonian achievement. Locke’s philosophy, in turn, seems to have influenced Newton, though there is only meagre evidence for this in Newton’s writings.

scholarly journals Molyneux's Problem in the Scottish Enlightenment

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 22-41
Author(s):  
Charles Bradford Bow
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Sir Isaac Newton ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Taste And Smell

This article examines the “progress” of Scottish metaphysics during the long eighteenth century. The scientific cultivation of natural knowledge drawn from the examples of Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), John Locke (1632–1704), and Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was a defining pursuit in the Scottish Enlightenment. The Aberdonian philosopher George Dalgarno (1616–1687); Thomas Reid (1710–1796), a member of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society known as the Wise Club; and the professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), contributed to that Scottish pattern of philosophical thinking. The question of the extent to which particular external senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) might be improved when others were damaged or absent from birth attracted their particular interest. This article shows the different ways in which Scottish anatomists of the mind resolved Molyneux’s Problem of whether or not an agent could accurately perceive an object from a newly restored external sense.

Francis Bacon and the Origins of Christian Virtuosity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
The Mind

Although the vocation of Christian virtuoso was invented and named by Robert Boyle, Francis Bacon provided the archtype. A Christian virtuoso is an experimental natural philosopher who professes Christianity, who endeavors to unite empiricism and supernatural belief in an intellectual life. In his program for the renewal of the learning Bacon prescribed that the empirical study of nature be the basis of all the sciences, including not only the study of physical things, but of human society, and literature. He insisted that natural causes only be used to explain natural events and proposed not to mix theology with natural philosophy. This became a rule of the Royal Society of London, of which Boyle was a principal founder. Bacon’s rule also had a theological use, to preserve the purity and the divine authority of revelation. In the mind of the Christian virtuoso, nature and divine revelation were separate but complementary sources of truth.

The Curious Eye

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Moment

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.

Hobbes'forgotten Natural Histories

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Bunce
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
Natural Histories

AbstractThomas Hobbes' natural philosophy is often characterised as rationalistic in opposition to the emerging inductivist method employed by Francis Bacon and fellows of the Gresham College - later the Royal Society. Where as the inductivists researched and published a multitude of natural histories, Hobbes' mature publications contain little natural historical information. Nonetheless, Hobbes read numerous natural histories and incorporated them into his works and often used details from these histories to support important theoretical moves. He also wrote a number of natural histories, some of which remain either unpublished or untranslated. Hobbes' own mature statements about his early interest in natural histories are also misleading. This article attempts to review Hobbes' early writings on natural histories and argues that his works of the 1630s and 1640s owe a significant debt to the natural histories of Francis Bacon, Hobbes' one-time patron.

Absolute Time

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Thomas
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Absolute Time ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
Material Bodies ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Century Development

What is time? Traditionally, it has been answered that time is a product of the human mind, or the motion of celestial bodies. In the mid-seventeenth century, a new kind of answer emerged: time or eternal duration is ‘absolute’, in the sense it is independent of human minds and material bodies. This study explores the development of absolute time or eternal duration during one of Britain’s richest and most creative metaphysical periods, from the 1640s to the 1730s. It features an interconnected set of main characters—Henry More, Walter Charleton, Isaac Barrow, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Samuel Clarke, and John Jackson—alongside a large and varied supporting cast, whose metaphysics are all read in their historical context and given a place in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century development of thought on time. In addition to interpreting the metaphysics of these characters, this study advances two general, developmental theses. First, the complexity of positions on time (and space) defended in early modern thought is hugely under-appreciated. Second, distinct kinds of absolutism emerged in British philosophy, helping us to understand why some absolutists considered time to be barely real, whilst others identified it with the most real being of all: God.

‘Finding the Genuine Light of Nature’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronwen Price
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Distinct Aspect

This chapter explores four significant figures: Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Henry More and Anne Conway, each of whom represents an important and distinct aspect of the relationship between religion and science in the early modern period. It considers diverse approaches to questions such as whether matter is connected to spirit and the extent to which the workings and causes of physical phenomena are separate from those of metaphysical design and purpose, thus demonstrating the ways in which theological and scientific concerns are frequently intertwined during this period. However, this chapter examines not only competing modes of thought, but also the interconnections between them. It shows how theories about the relationship between religion and science arose out of a self-conscious response to other voices and were informed by exchange of ideas and open-ended debate.

Locke, Bacon and Natural History

2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter R. Anstey
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Medical Philosophy ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Natural Histories ◽  
New Evidence

AbstractThis paper argues that the construction of natural histories, as advocated by Francis Bacon, played a central role in John Locke's conception of method in natural philosophy. It presents new evidence in support of John Yolton's claim that "the emphasis upon compiling natural histories of bodies ... was the chief aspect of the Royal Society's programme that attracted Locke, and from which we need to understand his science of nature". Locke's exposure to the natural philosophy of Robert Boyle, the medical philosophy of Thomas Sydenham, his interest in travel literature and his conception of the division of the sciences are examined. From this survey, a cumulative case is presented which establishes, independently of an in-depth exegesis of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the central role for Locke of the construction of natural histories in natural philosophy.

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