Handling Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution

Disciplines and New Approaches to Natural Philosophy, from John Dee to Isaac Newton
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-53511-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 37, 252 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 561 g

Reihe: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy and Science

The Scientific Revolution saw the redefinition of many scholastic notions about the nature of the world and its constituent parts, from planets to particles. Wang’s book introduces a convincing and wide-ranging narrative of the changing place of ‘occult qualities’ in the context of emergent new scientific methods and early modern disciplinary realignments. Through in-depth analysis of the diverse treatments of this notion, whereby it becomes now a hollow phrase, now a touchstone for the superiority of new physics, Wang shows how the transformation of this notion is key to understanding almost every facet of the new physics of the age.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wang, Xiaona

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: Neuzeit

Inhaltsverzeichnis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 RE-DISCIPLINING “OCCULT QUALITIES”: MECHANICS AND THE MIXED MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

1.1 Being “skilled in ‘catoptrics’”

1.2 Testing a body of “astronomical hypotheses”

1.3 Dismissing “idle imaginings”

1.4 Creating the “unheard-of paradox”


2 MANIFESTING “OCCULT CAUSES”: EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS AND EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

2.1 The physician’s pathway

2.2 The Baconian method

2.3 Occult causes; manifest effects

2.4 The “physico-mathematicall-experimentall” programme

3 EMPLOYING THE OCCULT POWERS OF THE LODESTONE AND ORBITAL MOTIONS

3.1 Gilbert’s magnetism

3.2 Magnetism and gravity

3.3 Approaches to orbital motions


4 EXPLORING HIDDEN QUALITIES OF MATTER: “VIS ACTIVA”

4.1 Matter emits (magnetical) effluvia

4.2 Matter vibrates and so does aether

4.3 Matter attracts and repels


5 REINTRODUCING “OCCULT QUALITIES” INTO NATURAL PHILOSOPHY? NEWTON’S ARPPORACHES TO PHYSICS

5.1 Early immersion in the mixed mathematical programme

5.2 The inimitable Newtonian methodology: dynamics

5.3 Approaches to physics and active principles


CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Über Autor(innen)

Xiaona Wang, Ph. D. (2019, University of Edinburgh), is now a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, working on a three-year project on early modern gravitational theories.