Tricentenary of Isaac Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"

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.

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The Reception of Descartes in the Seventeenth-Century Scottish Universities: Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy (1650–1680)

Journal of Scottish Philosophy ◽

10.3366/jsp.2015.0103 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 179-201 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Giovanni Gellera

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Natural Philosophy

In 1685, during the heyday of Scottish Cartesianism (1670–90), regent Robert Lidderdale from Edinburgh University declared Cartesianism the best philosophy in support of the Reformed faith. It is commonplace that Descartes was ostracised by the Reformed, and his role in pre-Enlightenment Scottish philosophy is not yet fully acknowledged. This paper offers an introduction to Scottish Cartesianism, and argues that the philosophers of the Scottish universities warmed up to Cartesianism because they saw it as a newer, better version of their own traditional Reformed scholasticism, chiefly in metaphysics and natural philosophy.

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Review: David M. Knight and Matthew D. Eddy (eds.), Science and Beliefs: from Natural Philosophy to Natural Science

Ecotheology ◽

10.1558/ecot.v11i4.513 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Elizabeth V. Haigh

Keyword(s):

Natural Science ◽

Natural Philosophy

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The Origin of a New Kind of Science From the Life Sciences

Philosophical Literary Journal Logos ◽

10.22394/0869-5377-2020-1-131-155 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 131-158

Keyword(s):

Natural Philosophy ◽

Human Life ◽

Natural Sciences ◽

Natural Phenomenon ◽

Dominican Order ◽

Cultural Traditions ◽

Knowledge Based ◽

Living Things ◽

Theoretical Morphology ◽

Living Nature

Science in the modern era began with a process of synthesis; the natural sciences in particular emerged through a coalescence of several cultural traditions. Scientific knowledge arose in a series of several separate events as mathematics, philology, physics and biology emerged independently. Scientific ideas about natural life developed via a synthesis of three types of knowledge. (1) There was the tradition of herbalism as a type of knowledge of nature, and this approach remained close to the Aristotelian tradition of describing nature with a bookish method centered on descriptive practice. (2) The scholastic tradition clarified existing concepts and formed new ones. Its role was crucial in supplying nascent science with its set of cognitive tools. (3) The alchemical tradition provided experimental knowledge of nature as applied to human life. It was particularly important in building the skills needed to connect theoretical systems with reality. This synthesis in natural philosophy was the basis of Linnaean reforms. However, theoretical morphology was cen¬tral to Linnaeus’ thinking and, its features were responsible for the success of his system. Theoretical morphology offered ways to decide how a natural phenomenon should be reduced and divided into parts in order to serve as an object of scientific cognition. Essential theoretical precepts for this morphology were formulated by Andrea Cesalpino in De plantis libri XVI (1583). Hence, the origin of the natural sciences as a study of living nature should properly be traced to the 16th century. This strand in the development of the new scientific approach in Europe through studying living things should also be connected with earlier (medieval) efforts of the Dominican Order (promoting purer versions of Aristotelianism), while another strand which led to the appearance of physics and other more mathematically expressed branches of the natural sciences belongs to the Franciscan orders (more influenced by Neoplatonism). Science emerged then as profound and experimentally verifiable theoretical knowledge based on ideation through the construction of the objects of experimental research.

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