Mediating actio in distans: Leibniz, Clarke and Newton on the communicability of forces

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Florian Sprenger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Technological Condition ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Basic Tenet ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Difference ◽  
To Come ◽  
Descriptive Language

This article revisits the debate between Leibniz and Clarke to explore conceptual shifts in the use of the term medium. A basic tenet of physics since antiquity says that every act of communication ‐ that is, every transmission of a force from the place of its cause to that of its effect ‐ requires a medium to ensure its interaction. In the context of the Early Modern Period, media were regarded as mediating instances that enabled communication. If these instances were not immediately connected but rather spatially separated from one another ‐ as in the case of gravitation, magnetism or electricity ‐ then there had to be a medium to ensure both the transmission of the force and the causal connection. Although the mediation of the medium took place in an inexplicable way, it seemed to explain one process or another by its mere introduction. The epistemological foundations of communicability ‐ those with which Leibniz, Clarke and Newton were attempting to come to terms ‐ remain relevant to the descriptive language with which we depict our present and its technological condition. Without duration there is no mediation but rather immediacy and simultaneity. Immediacy means that the necessary separation between the two events, the abyss of communication, is negated. Immediacies, like instantaneous actions at a distance, presuppose the difference they are deemed to eradicate.

The History of Continua

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
To Come

Mathematical and philosophical thought about continuity has changed considerably over the ages. Aristotle insisted that continuous substances are not composed of points, and that they can only be divided into parts potentially; a continuum is a unified whole. The most dominant account today, traced to Cantor and Dedekind, is in stark contrast with this, taking a continuum to be composed of infinitely many points. The opening chapters cover the ancient and medieval worlds: the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, and a recently discovered manuscript by Bradwardine. In the early modern period, mathematicians developed the calculus the rise of infinitesimal techniques, thus transforming the notion of continuity. The main figures treated here include Galileo, Cavalieri, Leibniz, and Kant. In the early party of the nineteenth century, Bolzano was one of the first important mathematicians and philosophers to insist that continua are composed of points, and he made a heroic attempt to come to grips with the underlying issues concerning the infinite. The two figures most responsible for the contemporary hegemony concerning continuity are Cantor and Dedekind. Each is treated, along with precursors and influences in both mathematics and philosophy. The next chapters provide analyses of figures like du Bois-Reymond, Weyl, Brouwer, Peirce, and Whitehead. The final four chapters each focus on a more or less contemporary take on continuity that is outside the Dedekind–Cantor hegemony: a predicative approach, accounts that do not take continua to be composed of points, constructive approaches, and non-Archimedean accounts that make essential use of infinitesimals.

scholarly journals Nulti stupanj reprezentacije: Umjetnost, tehnika i slikovno pojavljivanje

Ars Adriatica ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 241
Author(s):  
Krešimir Purgar
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Actual Reality ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship

My starting hypothesis in the theory of pictorial appearing is that Gottfried Boehm’s notion of iconic difference can serve as a sufficiently comprehensive concept for differentiating between image and non-image in all visual artefacts that have been created during the several millennia of visual representation. This era started with the first paleolithic drawings and includes the entire visual production from the period “before art”, as well as all those visual representations that emerged in the early modern period beyond the needs of religious worship, only to be substituted through the technosphere. However, since the technosphere is characterized by increasingly evolved systems of visual immersion, from the all-accessible OLED screen and IMAX cinema theatres to Oculus Rift glasses and further to the experience of total immersion, which recreates synesthetic visual-haptic impressions, ontological differentiation between the visual surface as such and the extra-iconic reality can no longer be established with the idea of difference alone. Namely, the notion of difference can serve as a qualifier for defining the relationship between the separate categories in an object – in our case, the pictorial and non-pictorial ones – only insofar as the reality in which they are situated is identical or equivalent. Thus, nobody questions the clear ontological separation between the two-dimensional represented reality such as established in cinematic fiction and the non-represented, that is actual reality existing outside of that fiction. Many films and artworks count on that implied separation and can therefore afford to question the borderline between the two, primarily within a strictly artistic discourse. Boehm’s theory of iconic difference and Jean-Luc Nancy’s understanding of the cut have helped establish the semiotic-phenomenological criteria for a theoretical differentiation between various experiences that are innate to man’s picture of the world. In other words, the difference or ontological cut between image and non-image can exist only because even a modestly capable individual can empirically grasp these two categories. However, my hypothesis is that iconic difference reveals itself as an inadequate concept for that ontological cut, not only because the status and the possibilities of human experience are radically altered in the time and space of the technosphere, but also because this new type of experience has not yet been “normalized” within the process that Flint Schier has termed “natural generativity”. The space and time of the technosphere require that one should no longer approach the image merely as the ancient Greek eikon, i.e. mirroring or representation, but rather as an experience, event, and a specific type of phenomenon. The modalities of pictorial appearing in the technosphere can be recognized as symptoms of the most recent visual turn, in any case the first in the 21st century, which no longer occurs in an encounter between image and language, as lucidly described by Mitchell and Boehm, but in an encounter between analogue and digital images, between representation and post-representation, reality and virtuality, semiotics and phenomenology. In order to understand this epochally new reality, one can use concepts such as Bolter’s and Grusin’s remediation, or Žarko Paić’s idea of the technosphere, as well as some other approaches, such as Paul Crowther’s categorization of “transhistorical images” or the phenomenologically based interpretation of art and images that Martin Seel has termed “the aesthetics of appearing”.

scholarly journals “Government in India and Japan is different from government in Europe”: Asian Jesuits on Infrastructure, Administrative Space, and the Possibilities for a Global Management of Power

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Markus Friedrich
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Far East ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Global Management ◽  
Global Space ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Far East ◽  
The Difference

This paper investigates the influence of geographical distance on the practices and concepts of Jesuit administration in the early modern period. It discusses in particular select letters by Alessandro Valignano from East Asia, to demonstrate how loyal Jesuits in the Far East asked for administrative adjustments in order to overcome the enormous infrastructural difficulties involved in upholding constant epistolary communication with Rome. Valignano over and again stressed both the difference and the distance between Asia and Europe and thought that both factors necessitated an accommodation of the order’s organizational framework. This case study thus helps address the broader questions of how the members of the Society of Jesus conceived of global space. It becomes clear that, while they hoped for institutional unity and insisted frequently on procedural uniformity, they also openly acknowledged that due to distance and cultural differences there never could exist an entirely homogeneous, single global Jesuit space.

Women and Work: Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janine Lanza
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
High Status ◽  
Skilled Trades ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
The Difference ◽  
And Gender

In Europe in the Early Modern period, women worked an enormous range of jobs and professions. From farmwives who helped plant and harvest crops to fishmongers who sold their wares in markets to guildswomen who engaged in skilled labor, as well as artists, scholars, midwives, doctors, prostitutes, and servants, women participated in every corner of the economy. This wide participation was evident in all of Europe, east as well as west, despite many local and regional differences in how women labored. But notwithstanding the presence of women in all sectors of the economy, women’s work was not understood or valued in the same way as men’s work. In contrast to male workers, female workers saw their ability to practice certain trades curtailed and their capabilities were often seen as inferior to those of men. Women were paid less than men and their work was often more contingent, despite that fact that many families relied on the income or work of all their members. Nonetheless, despite the patriarchal ideology that sought to limit or undervalue their working contributions, women forged ahead working in all sectors of the economy. They did so in order to not only support themselves and their families, but also as part of their self-conception as productive and contributing members of their communities. This article provides sources to support this understanding of the vast range of female economic activity in Europe in the Early Modern period. While women participated broadly in the labor market, it cannot be denied that the pay, professions, and status they enjoyed from those activities were shaped by the assumptions of patriarchy. In her 2008 work Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, Merry Wiesner notes that “the gender of the worker, not the work itself or its location, marked the difference between what were considered domestic tasks and what was considered production” (p. 104); we can add, the conditions of work and pay hinged upon gendered definitions. For example, one of the most prestigious and lucrative sectors of the economy were skilled trades, often controlled by guilds, especially in France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Italy; English guilds had little real influence by the Early Modern period, but the trades they had controlled remained high-status ones that tried to admit few women. Nonetheless, women found ways to work in skilled trades, regardless of how they were organized. Likewise, other professions marked by high levels of education, pay, and status, such as the law, medicine, academia, and the fine arts, created bars to women joining their ranks, despite the presence of a handful of path-breaking female practitioners. Globally, women were found in greater numbers in less skilled and less lucrative jobs.

Judgment and belief, in early modern philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Marušić
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
Causal Influence ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Difference

What is the difference between simply thinking about something and judging or believing that something is the case? One finds a remarkable range of answers to this question in the early modern period. A traditional approach to judgment has its origins in Aristotle and treats judgment as closely related to predication. Judging, on this view, is a matter of affirming or denying something of something else. Affirming and denying, in turn, are different forms of predication: affirming whiteness of snow results in the judgment that snow is white; denying whiteness of snow results in the judgment that snow is not white. Descartes rejects this approach and instead treats judgment as an act of will. He holds that the intellect or understanding presents us with a complete content for judgment, and then the will, in a separate act, assents or dissents to this content. Spinoza rejects both the Aristotelian and Cartesian views by holding, against the Aristotelian view, that every idea has propositional content and also, against the Cartesian view, that every idea is an affirmation. Spinoza claims that judgment or affirmation just consists in the causal influence that an idea has on us, and he holds that all ideas have some influence. Thus, Spinoza holds the radical view that all ideas are judgments. Finally, Hume also rejects both the Aristotelian and Cartesian views. Against the Aristotelians, he denies that what is judged or believed must always be a proposition with a subject–predicate structure. Against the Cartesians, he denies that belief is in any way subject to the will. Finally, against Spinoza he insists that there are some ideas that are merely conceived and not believed or judged. Hume holds that beliefs differ from ideas that are not believed in a way that makes beliefs more like perceptual experiences.

From Craft to Institution: Accounting in Italy from the Middle ages to the Early Modern Period

2012 ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Volkova
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Technical Standards ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Professional Field

The article describes the evolution of accounting from the simple registration technique to economic and social institution in medieval Italy. We used methods of institutional analysis and historical research. It is shown that the institutionalization of accounting had been completed by the XIV century, when it became a system of codified technical standards, scholar discipline and a professional field. We examine the interrelations of this process with business environment, political, social, economic and cultural factors of Italy by the XII—XVI centuries. Stages of institutionalization are outlined.

Becoming “Indians”: The Jesuit Missionary Path from Italy to Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-50
Author(s):  
Camilla Russell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Jesuit Missions ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Italian Provinces ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Jesuit Missionary

The Jesuit missions in Asia were among the most audacious undertakings by Europeans in the early modern period. This article focuses on a still relatively little understood aspect of the enterprise: its appointment process. It draws together disparate archival documents to recreate the steps to becoming a Jesuit missionary, specifically the Litterae indipetae (petitions for the “Indies”), provincial reports about missionary candidates, and replies to applicants from the Jesuit superior general. Focusing on candidates from the Italian provinces of the Society of Jesus, the article outlines not just how Jesuit missionaries were appointed but also the priorities, motivations, and attitudes that informed their assessment and selection. Missionaries were made, the study shows, through a specific “way of proceeding” that was negotiated between all parties and seen in both organizational and spiritual terms, beginning with the vocation itself, which, whether the applicant departed or not, earned him the name indiano.

History of Ardalānids (1590-1810) by Sharaf al-Dīn bin Shams al-Dīn

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-79
Author(s):  
Sara Zandi Karimi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Translation

This article is a critical translation of the “History of the Ardalānids.” In doing so, it hopes to make available to a wider academic audience this invaluable source on the study of Iranian Kurdistan during the early modern period. While a number of important texts pertaining to the Kurds during this era, most notably the writings of the Ottoman traveler Evliya Chalabi, focus primarily on Ottoman Kurdistan, this piece in contrast puts Iranian Kurdistan in general and the Ardalān dynasty in particular at the center of its historical narrative. Thus it will be of interest not only to scholars of Kurdish history but also to those seeking more generally to research life on the frontiers of empires.Keywords: Ẕayl; Ardalān; Kurdistan; Iran.ABSTRACT IN KURMANJIDîroka Erdelaniyan (1590-1810)Ev gotar wergereke rexneyî ya “Dîroka Erdelaniyan” e. Bi vê yekê, merema xebatê ew e ku vê çavkaniya pir biqîmet a li ser Kurdistana Îranê ya di serdema pêş-modern de ji bo cemawerê akademîk berdest bike. Hejmareke metnên girîng li ser Kurdên wê serdemê, bi taybetî nivîsînên Evliya Çelebî yê seyyahê osmanî, zêdetir berê xwe didine Kurdistana di bin hukmê Osmaniyan de. Lê belê, di navenda vê xebatê de, bi giştî Kurdistana Îranê û bi taybetî jî xanedana Erdelaniyan heye. Wisa jî ew dê ne tenê ji bo lêkolerên dîroka kurdî belku ji bo ewên ku dixwazin bi rengekî berfirehtir derheq jiyana li ser tixûbên împeretoriyan lêkolînan bikin jî dê balkêş be.ABSTRACT IN SORANIMêjûy Erdellan (1590-1810)Em wutare wergêrranêkî rexneyî “Mêjûy Erdellan”e, bew mebestey em serçawe girînge le ser Kurdistanî Êran le seretakanî serdemî nwê bixate berdest cemawerî ekademî. Jimareyek serçawey girîng le ser kurdekan lew serdeme da hen, diyartirînyan nûsînekanî gerîdey ‘Usmanî Ewliya Çelebîye, ke zortir serincyan le ser ‘Kurdistanî ‘Usmanî bûwe. Em berheme be pêçewanewe Kurdistanî Êran be giştî, we emaretî Erdelan be taybetî dexate senterî xwêndinewekewe. Boye nek tenya bo twêjeranî biwarî mêjûy kurdî, belku bo ewaney le ser jiyan le sinûre împiratoriyekan twêjînewe deken, cêgay serinc debêt.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document