Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century

by Wolfgang Lefèvre (Editor)

Overview

Neither the development of metaphysics in all its purity during the period encompassing the three thinkers, nor the transformations that physics underwent from Newton to Lagrange or those in botany from Ray to Jussieu, compel the attention of the ten studies. Rather they explore the interactions among the two spheres of change that modern thinkers distinguish as science and philosophy, and how they were generated by the given conditions of history. They cover seismic vibrations in metaphysics, metaphysics and the analytical method, avenues of Newtonianism, whether matter can think, and metaphysics and natural history. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789401597296
Publisher:	Springer-Verlag New York, LLC
Publication date:	06/29/2013
Series:	Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science , #220
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Wolfgang Lefèvre taught philosophy in connection with history of science at the Freie Universität Berlin. Since 1994 Senior Scholar and now Emeritus scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. His research is focused on the interrelations of technological and scientific knowledge in the early modern period. Recent publication: »Minerva meets Vulcan: Scientific and Technological Literature – 1450-1750 (2021).

Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
Part 1.	Seismic Vibrations in Metaphysics
1	Disciplinary Transformations in the Age of Newton: The Case of Metaphysics	3
Part 2.	Metaphysics and the Analytical Method
2	Leibniz' Concept of Possible Worlds and the Analysis of Motion in Eighteenth-Century Physics	27
3	The Limits of Intelligibility: The Status of Physical Sciences in d'Alemberts Philosophy	47
4	Order of Nature and Orders of Science	61
Part 3.	Avenues of Newtonianism
5	Samuel Clarke's Annotations in Jacques Rohault's Traite de Physique, and How They Contributed to Popularising Newton's Physics	95
6	Kant on Extension and Force: Critical Appropriations of Leibniz and Newton	111
7	Enlightenment Scotland's Philosophico-Chemical Physics	129
Part 4.	Can Matter Think?
8	Materialistic Theories of Mind and Brain	149
9	Kant's Second Paralogism in Context: The Critique of Pure Reason on Whether Matter Can Think	175
Part 5.	Metaphysics and Natural History
10	Natural or Artificial Systems? The Eighteenth-Century Controversy on Classification of Animals and Plants and its Philosophical Contexts	191
	Appendices
1	Newton's scholia from David Gregory's Estate on the Propositions IV trough IX Book III of his Principia	213
2	The Concepts of Immanuel Kant's Natural Philosophy (1747-1780): A Database Rendering their Explicit and Implicit Networks	267