Francis Bacon and the Aristotelian Tradition on the Nature of Sound

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-25
Author(s):  
Claudia Dumitru ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Local Motion ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

Centuries II and III of Francis Bacon’s posthumous natural history Sylva Sylvarum are largely dedicated to sound. This paper claims that Bacon’s investigation on this topic is fruitfully read against the background of the Aristotelian theory of sound, as presented in De anima commentaries. I argue that Bacon agreed with the general lines of this tradition in a crucial aspect: he rejected the reduction of sound to local motion. Many of the experimental instances and more theoretical remarks from his natural history of sound can be elucidated against this wider concern of distinguishing sound from motion, a theme that had been a staple of Aristotelian discussions of sound and hearing since the Middle Ages. Bacon admits that local motion is part of the efficient cause of sound, but he denies that it is its form, which means that sound cannot be reduced to a type of local motion. This position places him outside subsequent developments in natural philosophy in the seventeenth century.

John Philoponus on Physical Place

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis Papachristou
Keyword(s):  
Physical Model ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Major Topic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

This book examines the place of physical bodies, a major topic of natural philosophy that has occupied philosophers since antiquity. Aristotle’s conceptions of place (topos) and the void (kenon), as expounded in the Physics, were systematically repudiated by John Philoponus (ca. 485-570) in his philosophical commentary on that work. The primary philosophical concern of the present study is the in-depth investigation of the concept of place established by Philoponus, putting forward the claim that the latter offers satisfactory solutions to problems raised by Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition regarding the nature of place. Philoponus’ account proposes a specific physical model of how physical bodies exist and move in place, and regards place as an intrinsic reality of the physical cosmos. Due to exactly this model, his account may be considered as strictly pertaining to the study of physics, thereby constituting a remarkable episode in the history of philosophy and science.

scholarly journals The Syrian romance of St. Clement of Rome, and its early Slavonic version

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-65
Author(s):  
Darya Morozova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Detailed Explanation ◽  
Ethical Content ◽  
Biblical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Authentic Work

The article analyzes the ethical and theological content of the apocryphal Syrian "autobiography" of St. Clement of Rome (Epytome), as well as its early Slavic translation (Life of St. Clement). The study uses historical-philosophical, patristic and philological methodology to outline the specific teachings, attributed to St. Clement by this Greek-speaking Syrian text from the pseudo-Clementine cycle. The methods of comparative textology and translation studies are used to analyze the features of the Slavic version of the work. The study revealed that, contrary to the ideas of the publisher of the Slavic version, P. Lavrov, the translation was undoubtedly made according to the archaic, pre-metaphrasic version of the work. Therefore, it can be dated to the ninth century and come from the school of Cyril and Methodius. The popularity of the monument among Slavic readers is partly explained by the archaic features of the original version of the work preserved in the translation, such as graphic imagery, expressive presentation, and numerous dialogues. Such a lively account facilitated the perception of the conceptually rich ethical content of the work. At the heart of both Greek and Slavic versions is the ethical category of philanthropy (φιλανθρωπία), which figures as a central Christian virtue. Much of the Epitome is devoted to a detailed explanation of this category and its distinction from other virtues. In the original, the ethics of philanthropy is opposed to the astrological ideology represented by Clement’s father Faust. Faust's views are based on the natural philosophical ideas of the early Greek Stoics. Apostle Peter, Clement's teacher, responds to his arguments from the standpoint of Judeo-Christian monotheism, referring to the biblical history of his people. Thus, Hellenism is confronted with biblical monotheism. So, Epitome appears a kind of argument in the controversy between Gentile Christians and Judeo-Christians (Ebionites), which has troubled the Syrian Church for centuries. However, in translation, this clash of worldviews remains obscured, as the translator does not seem to recognize either the terminology of Stoic natural philosophy, or astrological issues, or the debate between the traditions of Peter and Paul in Syria. Thus, all the Stoic terminology of Faust is reduced to a single concept of "being". Therefore, in the translated version, the controversy is not so much between Christianity and astrology, as between ethics and "ontology". Instead, the translator enriches the philosophical outline of the work with polysemic Slavic vocabulary, which sheds new light on the role of the bishop in Peter’s instructions to Clement. Comparison of the Greek and Slavic versions of the Epitome – an autobiography attributed to St. Clement – with his only authentic work, 1Corinthians, allowed to draw another unexpected conclusion. All these works are not only devoted to one main problem - the restoration of peace in the controversial Christian community, but also offer similar ways out of the crisis through brotherly love, solidarity and respect for the otherness of the fellow Christians. This may indicate either that the author of the Syrian apocrypha was inspired by the true Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, or that the image of St. Clement, that developed in the early tradition, dictated the message of the pseudo-epigraph quite powerfully. Due to this consonance, the apocryphal work of the Syrian Ebionites did to some extent acquaint Slavic readers with the ideas of Clement of Rome, whose only authentic work was almost unknown in the Middle Ages.

CHARTRES SCHOOL IN THE 12TH CENTURY CULTURAL RENAISSANCE: SUBSTANTIVE PRIORITIES AND EVOLUTION VECTORS

2021 ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
Michael A. Kornienko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Education ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Chartres Cathedral ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Cultural Renaissance ◽  
History Of

The author analyzes the prerequisites for the formation of a theological and philosophical school, founded in 990 by Bishop Fulbert in Chartres, which flourished during the years of the Episcopal ministry of Yves of Chartres (1090–1115), a recognized intellectual center of Western Europe. The role of the Chartres Cathedral School as a citadel of metaphysical, cosmological and natural-scientific Platonism in the era of early scholasticism is revealed. The philosophical orientation of the Chartres school (orientation to the ideas of Neoplatonism), as shown in the work, is the result of a combination of the ideas of Plato, aristotelism, stoicism, pythagoreanism, Eastern and Christian mysticism and religion. The body of ideas characteristic of the Neoplatonism tradition is analyzed, the account of which is essential in understanding the specifics of the Chartres school ideological platform: the ideas of a mystically intuitive knowledge of the higher, the stages of transition from “one and the universal” to matter, the idea of comprehension of pure spirituality. The thesis is substantiated that the time of the highest prosperity of the Chartres school, its highest fame is the XII century, which went down in the history of civilization as the era of the cultural renaissance taking place in France. The specificity of the 12th century renaissance, as shown in the study, lies in the growing interest in Greek philosophy and Roman classics (this also determines the other name of the era – the Roman Renaissance), in expanding the field of knowledge through the assimilation of Western European science and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. The thesis in which the specifics of the entry of Greek science into the culture of Western Europe is also identified. This entry was carried out through the culture of the Muslim world, which also determined the specifics of the cultural renaissance of France of the XII century. Radical changes are revealed that affect the sphere of education and, above all, religious education; the idea of reaching the priority positions of philosophy and logic is substantiated – a situation that has survived until the end of the Middle Ages. This situation, as shown in the work, was facilitated by the rare growth rate of the translation centers of Constantinople, Palermo, Toledo. It is shown that scholasticism in its early version is oriented towards religious orthodoxy. In the teaching of philosophy, the vector turned out to be biased towards natural philosophy, which was due, as shown in the work, to the spread of the ideas of Aristotle and Plato. In its educational program, the school synthesized the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Elements of natural philosophy are inherent in the works of Bernard of Chartres, Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres representing the Chartres school. Deep studies on the problem of universals ensured the invasion of logic in the field of metaphysical constructions of the Chartres school.

Spiders, Ants, and Bees

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Doina-Cristina Rusu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Histories

This paper argues that the methodology Francis Bacon used in his natural histories abides by the theoretical commitments presented in his methodological writings. On the one hand, Bacon advocated a middle way between idle speculation and mere gathering of facts. On the other hand, he took a strong stance against the theorisation based on very few facts. Using two of his sources whom Bacon takes to be the reflection of these two extremes—Giambattista della Porta as an instance of idle speculations, and Hugh Platt as an instance of gathering facts without extracting knowledge—I show how Bacon chose the middle way, which consists of gathering facts and gradually extracting theory out of them. In addition, it will become clear how Bacon used the expertise of contemporary practitioners to criticise fantastical theories and purge natural history of misconceived notions and false speculations.

Political Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-133
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gulliver's Travels ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Late seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the conjunction of politics and science at the core of Francis Bacon’s experimental project. Thomas Sprat’s The History of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels use the conventions of literary knowledge to express their scientific-political visions, insisting that natural philosophy cannot be understood apart from the political institutions enabling and enabled by its practice and promulgation. These writers use the experimental imagination to envisage, in turn, civil government, absolutist monarchy, and imperialism. Sprat advances scientific triumphalism and a model for schooling gentlemen into civil society.

Book reviews: Ministry of science?

1993 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-311
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Truth ◽  
British State ◽  
Lord Chancellor

Julian Martin, Francis Bacon, the State, and the Reform of Natural Philosophy . Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 236, £35 (hdbk). ISBN 0-521-382491 ‘Bacon’s perspective was always that of a statesman; he believed problems of knowledge were properly part of a statesman’s concerns; and he believed a reformed natural philosophy would be a splendid support for the imperial [British] state he desired to see established.’ So Julian Martin opens the final chapter, ‘A reformed natural philosophy’, of a book that has already traversed Bacon’s worlds of Elizabethan statesmanship and law. Francis Bacon has a firm place in the history of philosophy and science, and is otherwise almost unknown save by his disgraceful fall from office. Julian Martin insists that his writings should be set in the context of statecraft rather than epistemology; above all he was no logician. If Bacon wrote of science like a Lord Chancellor it was because his aim was to be a Solon (or Salomon) rather than an Aristotle, despite the title of his most-quoted scientific book. Bacon did not write to teach private men how to make discoveries in Nature, for he was guided by an entrenched detestation of individualism. He sought support for the establishment of a public institution, a ‘new department of state, a “royal work” with a royal governor’ - presumably Bacon himself (p. 163). It is hardly strange that his idea of the way to arrive at scientific truth was an adaptation from his ideal process ‘for acquiring knowledge about the law’ (p. 169). Hence the justice of Harvey ’ s apothegm.

Redefining the Role of Experiment in Bacon's Natural History: How Baconian was Descartes before Emerging from His Cocoon?

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 158-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mădălina Giurgea ◽  
Laura Georgescu
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

AbstractIn this article we argue that the views that Francis Bacon and René Descartes held about the role of experiments in the process of discovery are closer than previously accepted. Looking at the way experiments and the heuristics of experimentation are embedded in Bacon's posthumous History of Dense and Rare and Descartes' Discourses 8, 9, 10 of the Meteorology, we will show that experiments help the investigator both in solving specific problems that could not have otherwise been foreseen and in generating relevant information that advances the scope of the investigation.

Translating the Concept of Experiment in the Late Eighteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Eirini Goudarouli ◽  
Dimitris Petakos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Different Cultures

The Philosophical Grammar: Being a View of the Present State of Experimented Physiology, or Natural Philosophy, In Four Parts (1735) by Benjamin Martin was translated into Greek by Anthimos Gazis in 1799. According to the history of concepts, no political, social, or intellectual activity can occur without the establishment of a common vocabulary of basic concepts. By interfering in the linguistic structure, the act of translation may affect crucially the encounter of different cultures. By bringing together the history of science and the history of concepts, this article treats the transfer of the concept of experiment from the seventeenth-century British philosophical context to the eighteenth-century Greek-speaking intellectual context. The article focuses mainly on the different ways Gazis’s translation contributed to the construction of a particular conceptual framework for the appropriation of new knowledge.

Self-Scrutiny and the Study of Nature: Robert Hooke's Diary as Natural History

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotte Mulligan
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
After Hours ◽  
College Now ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

Robert Hooke's intellectual life was steadfastly dedicated to the pursuit of natural philosophy and the formulation of an appropriate method for studying nature, His daily life, however, was seemingly fragmented—an energetic rush in and around the city of London, with him acting now as curator (and later secretary) of the Royal Society, now as Cutlerian Lecturer in the History of Nature and Art, now as Geometry Professor at Gresham College, now as architect and surveyor of postfire London, and forever as a member of a number of intersecting social, intellectual, and professional circles that made up London's coffeehouse culture. Such a range of activities was perhaps wider than that of many of his contemporaries, though other diarists, most notably Samuel Pepys, recorded similarly crammed lives. Yet despite the apparently unsystematic nature of his daily round he was, also like Pepys, a methodical man who hated to waste time, and for long periods he kept a diary that helped him account for how he spent it.I argue here that his diary keeping was an integral part of his scientific vision reflecting the epistemological and methodological practices that guided him as a student of nature. The diary should be read, I propose, not as an “after-hours” incidental activity removed from his professional and intellectual life; both its form and its content suggest that he chose to record a self that was as subject to scientific scrutiny as the rest of nature and that he thought that such a record could be applied to producing, in the end, a fully objective “history” with himself as the datum.

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