This article turns one of most cited philosopher's John Dewey's title, How We Think (1933/1998) back upon itself to consider how ‘thought’ or ‘reason’ are cultural practices that historically order and generate principles for reflection and action. The discussion proceeds thusly: (1) Schooling is about changing people; (2) Changing people embodies cultural theses about modes of living, such as that of being a lifelong learner or a Learning Society. The modes of living in modern pedagogy embody changing cultural norms and (...) values about systems of reason that are to express universal cosmopolitan qualities; (3) Pedagogy fabricates the systems of reason to principles for reflection and participation that shreds provincial values in the name of greater universal cosmopolitan values; (4) This ‘making’ of cosmopolitan ‘reason’ forms through cultural practices that have overlapping sets of distinctions and differentiations about agency, the rational planning of one's biography in time, and science as a procedure for action in daily life. The educational sciences and philosophy of education are inscription devices or intellectual tools in the governing practices; (5) The inscriptions of reason, however, are more than mere qualities of thought or the mind. The narratives and images of cosmopolitan reason embody particular sublimes about collective hopes, desires and fears; (6) Further, the distinctions of cosmopolitan reason are comparative in that the very qualities of the ‘reasonable person’ create maps of its opposite: those who do not ‘fit’ the normalized qualities of the cosmopolitan thus stand outside that mode of living; The last section (7) provides three exemplars of the changing notions of the cosmopolitan and its ‘other’ in school subjects (literacy, mathematics, and music). School subjects are viewed as alchemies that transmogrify disciplinary thinking into normalizing pedagogies that fabricate who the child is and should be. The historical sketch has two layers in its educational study. One is to explore the politics of schooling with cosmopolitanism as a comparative method to consider the changing cultural practices that fabricate who child is and should be. The second raises questions about taken‐for‐granted categories and their systems of reason of education and reform. The very categories and distinctions of policy, educational research and philosophy are historicized as cultural practices to order, classify and divide what is ‘seen’ and felt as experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 104-105 [Access article in PDF] William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe. Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 344. Cloth, $40.00. Newman and Principe have produced a masterful study of intellectual context, primarily by correcting the commonly held belief that there was a radical (...) break in the seventeenth century between late medieval alchemy and early modern chemistry. Although their main focus is on George Starkey (the 'alchemist') and Robert Boyle (the 'chemist'), they also provide copious details on the chemical practices and theories of Van Helmont, Benjamin Worsley, Frederick Clodius, and Kenelm Digby, among others. It is hard to do justice to their complex study in a short review. Following a brief summary, therefore, I will limit my discussion to how the authors' conclusions are significant for a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of philosophy in the seventeenth century.After a helpful introduction, Chapter 1 outlines the differences in the early lives of the English, aristocratic Boyle and the American, Harvard-educated Starkey. Chapter 2's background on late medieval chemistry includes an examination of corpuscular theories within that tradition as well as Van Helmont's arguments concerning the way in which mathematics is useful for explaining "superficial" changes but not the real, internal changes in bodies. Chapters 3 and 4 provide a close study of Starkey's laboratory notebooks. Among the entries, recorded in a style adapted from Scholasticism, there are passages that adopt the secrecy of alchemy, while others show Starkey's effective use of theoretical principles and such experimental quantitative methods as mass balance. Chapter 5 examines Boyle's intellectual context. Newman and Principe argue convincingly for Starkey's role in Boyle's addition of Helmontian elements to the general Baconian program. Chapter 6 looks at the [End Page 104] results of Boyle's eclectic mix of chemistry and mechanism. Although Helmontian chemistry played a significant role in Boyle's natural philosophy, the authors attribute his meager interest in quantitative measures and analyses to his attempts to use chemistry as a support for mechanism and as evidence against Aristotelianism. The concluding chapter draws together elements from previous chapters to provide the full argument against the idea of a radical break between medieval alchemy and modern chemistry.Newman and Principe's reconsideration of traditional categories surrounding the idea of a radical break should provide an impetus for similar reconsideration in the history of philosophy. As they point out, 'the' mechanical philosophy drew from a diverse range of disciplines. Boyle's eclectic and complex attempt to develop a unique version of the mechanical philosophy can be seen in other English philosophers, especially Locke and Newton. This study provides a promising basis for yet more extensive and refined studies of the seventeenth-century milieu. The continuing over-emphasis on the physical principles of Descartes and Gassendi's versions of the mechanical philosophy and the tendency to reduce all mechanism to their view needs revision. Also in need of reconsideration is the currently popular belief that the study of context simply means adding social elements to an uncontroversial intellectual context. As the authors clearly show, much more work on the intellectual context remains to be done.One line of research in the history of philosophy that could be pursued concerns the role of Francis Bacon in this context. Although Newman and Principe mention the general Baconian ethos, a detailed discussion of Bacon was clearly beyond their scope. Yet Bacon's own debts to chemistry, although frequently unrecognized, seem more significant given this study. Also, it would be interesting to see the extent to which Bacon's works influenced Van Helmont or Starkey. Newman and Principe's claims regarding the novelty of Starkey's notebooks, for example, may be a little overstated. Many of the elements from Starkey's notebooks can be found in Bacon's advice in his Natural and Experimental Histories (1622). In that work, Bacon advised writers... (shrink)

Historians have long seen Sir William Petty’s ‘political arithmetic’ as an important contribution to the early social sciences, applying mathematics to the analysis of political and especially economic questions. A closer look at Petty’s political arithmetic manuscripts reveals, however, his political preoccupation with ‘transmuting the Irish into English’ by state manipulation of demography. Large-scale, coerced ‘counter-transplantations’ of ‘exchanges of women’ between England and Ireland would facilitate the ‘proportionable mixture’ and ultimately the ‘union’ of the two populations, stabilizing the turbulent politics (...) of late Stuart Ireland and securing English colonial government there. This paper explores Petty’s use of alchemical concepts in his transmutative political arithmetic, and argues that the idiom of alchemy was essential to Petty’s conception of politics and his solution to the problem of governing culturally distinct colonial populations. It makes a preliminary attempt to identify some of Petty’s likely sources among seventeenth-century proponents of corpuscularian, mechanical accounts of chemical change. Finally, it suggests that the influence of alchemy on the shape of early social-scientific thought may have been more significant than was previously realized.Keywords: Political arithmetic; Alchemy; William Petty; Ireland; Political economy. (shrink)

Plato is the first scientist whose work we still possess. He is our first writer to interpret the natural world mathematically, and also the first theorist of mathematics in the natural sciences. As no one else before or after, he set out why we should suppose a link between nature and mathematics, a link that has never been stronger than it is today. Mathematical Plato examines how Plato organized and justified the principles, terms, and methods of our mathematical, (...) natural science. "Roger Sworder deserves our gratitude for drawing attention to the significance of mathematics in Plato's thought and writings. He lays the principal discussions out before us with clarity. He also presents Plato as a theorist of nature: of physics and not just metaphysics, to use Aristotle's distinction. Not all readers, we should admit, will be equally convinced of the usefulness of Plato's science for today, but they will all be led more deeply into Plato's vision of reality."--ANDREW DAVISON, Westcott House, Cambridge "Here is Plato for an anti-Platonic age. The author gives careful attention to some of the most important passages in the Platonic dialogues and offers new solutions to some of Plato's most famous mathematical puzzles. He then considers the implications of these penetrating studies for the philosophy of science, and the natural sciences especially. This is a book that revivifies the core themes of Platonism and restores science to worship. It shows Roger Sworder to be one of the foremost students of Plato writing today, and places him in the noble tradition of Thomas Taylor."--RODNEY BLACKHIRST, author of Primordial Alchemy and Modern Religion: Essays on Traditional Cosmology. (shrink)

Our greatest certainty and greatest mystery is our mortality. In this book, Steven M. Rosen explores the profound mystery of death and rebirth from psychological, philosophical, and alchemical perspectives. To model, embody, and contain the paradoxical transformations involved in the death-rebirth enigma, Rosen employs a paradoxical form of mathematics: the topology of the Moebius strip and Klein bottle. As we follow this alchemical odyssey, the author makes himself transparent through his dreams and brings himself tangibly into his text so as (...) to enact a dialectic of ego and Self. "In tackling the subject of death and rebirth Steven Rosen writes about our modern state of mind, how we got like this and where we need to go from here. He does all this with a psychotherapeutic insight that begins with his own subjectivity--and his own dreams--and ends with the subjectivity of the modern world. Using myths, dreams, and alchemical symbolism as well as psychological research and Jungian insights, Rosen speaks to us all from the self and the Self. A book to be read immediately, and then read again." --Christopher Hauke, Jungian analyst and author of Jung and the Postmodern: The Interpretation of Realities "How does a mental-spiritual ego, the creation of our post-Renaissance world, embrace the body as a living partner? In Dreams, Death, Rebirth, Steven M. Rosen offers a topological analysis that meets the challenge of this daunting endeavor. It is a remarkable accomplishment, and vital for the advancement of psychotherapy." --Nathan Schwartz-Salant, Jungian analyst and author of The Black Nightgown: The Fusional Complex and the Unlived Life Steven M. Rosen is professor emeritus of psychology at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. After receiving his PhD in psychology in 1971, he began exploring the foundations, frontiers, and poetics of science, and his work became transdisciplinary and philosophical in nature. His essays have appeared in journals and collections spanning the fields of psychology, philosophy, theoretical physics, education, semiotics, and ecology. He is the author of Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle (1994), Dimensions of Apeiron (2004), Topologies of the Flesh (2006), and The Self-Evolving Cosmos (2008). (shrink)

A new political practice, the ‘reason of state’, informed the ends and practices of natural study in the late sixteenth century. Informed by the study of the Roman historian Tacitus, political writers gathered ‘secrets of empire’ from both history and travel. Following the economic reorientation of ‘reason of state’ by Giovanni Botero (1544–1617), such secrets came to include bodies of useful particulars concerning nature and art collected by an expanding personnel of intelligencers. A comparison between various writers describing wide-scale collections, (...) such as Botero, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Jakob Bornitz (1560–1625) and Matthias Bernegger (1582–1640), reveals that seventeenth-century natural intelligencers across Europe not only were analogous to political intelligencers, but also were sometimes one and the same. Those seeking political prudence cast themselves as miners, prying precious particulars from the recesses of history, experience and disparate disciplines, including mathematics, alchemy and natural philosophy. The seventeenth-century practice of combining searches for secrets of empire, nature and art contests a frequent historiographical divide between empirical science and Tacitism or reason of state. It also points to the ways political cunning shaped the management of information for both politics and the study of nature and art. (shrink)

In 1648, J. Marcus Marci of Prague anticipated two chief features of Isaac Newton's celebrated 1672 theory of light and color, namely that colors are inherent to light and that the role of the prism is to separate the rays of color by means of refraction. Furthermore, Marci argued that colors produced by a first refraction are immutable when subjected to refraction by a second prism. This paper argues that the key to Marci's achievement derived from his chymical view of (...) light, which he tested by means of prism trials and geometrical constructions. I also suggest that Marci's unusual coupling of chymical philosophy with mathematics was a move unusual in the history of alchemy; and that his chymical understanding of light belongs to an underexplored tradition in the history of optics, which is distinct from mechanistic and Aristotelian theories of light. (shrink)

A paradigm-shifting work that revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. Captivatingly written, interwoven with tantalizing illustrations and historical vignettes ranging from Newton's alchemy to quantum mechanics to the storm surge of Hurricane Sandy, Michael Strevens's wholly original investigation of science asks two fundamental questions: Why is science so powerful? And why did it take so long, two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics, for the human race to start using science to learn (...) the secrets of nature? The Knowledge Machine's radical answer is that science calls on its practitioners to do something irrational: by willfully ignoring religion, theoretical beauty, and, especially, philosophy-essentially stripping away all previous knowledge-scientists embrace an unnaturally narrow method of inquiry, channeling unprecedented energy into observation and experimentation. Like Yuval Harari's Sapiens or Thomas Kuhn's 1962 classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine overturns much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world. (shrink)

In my article I present the conception of soul of Cornelius Agrippa based on his greatest work "De occulta philosophia" which is a kid of summa of natural and occult philosophy, hermeticism, cabbala, astrology, humanistic theology, medicine, and alchemy. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) was a famous renaissance philosopher, cabalist, astrologer and theologian whose contribution in renaissance philosophical deliberations is significant but still unknown in Poland. Agrippa's notion of soul is very important for his own project of new (...) pure magic which is described in his opus magnum. Therefore agrippian magic contains and perfects three kinds of knowledge: phisics, mathematics and theology. In the similary way Agrippa divided whole Cosmos in to three worlds. First and the most inferior world of the threefold Cosmos is the world of four elements of substance in Aristotle's meaning. The second one is the world of celestial bodies which comprises planets, stars and laws that rule them, and which is above the first world. The third one is the divine world of angels, soul of the world with platonic ideas and other intelligibilities. The three kinds of knowledge which Agrippa also called "regulative philosophy" are very useful for human in studying of each of three agrippian worlds. From this point of view also notion of humanity is very important for Agrippa. By the similarity between the macro- and microcosmos which appear in Agrippa's thought also human soul is threefold. Thus human soul contains in hierarchical order three parts viz.: idolum (which is the most inferior), ratio (being the middle part) and mens (which is on highest position in human soul). Each part has its own function which can be fully activated by God's light received by mens. In describing of functions of threefold soul Agrippa receives inspirations from prior philosophers like Aristotle, Awicenna or Awerroes. Another cause which emphases a great role of the agrippian conception of the soul is its connection with oryginal concepts of phantasy and threefold melancholy which is similar to the treepartite soul. Those two concepts are the examples of the influences of celestial powers which source is in stars and planets. (shrink)

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists of all time, a thinker of extraordinary range and creativity who has left enduring legacies in mathematics and the natural sciences. In this volume a team of distinguished contributors examine all the main aspects of Newton's thought, including not only his approach to space, time, mechanics, and universal gravity in his Principia, his research in optics, and his contributions to mathematics, but also his more clandestine investigations into alchemy, theology, and (...) prophecy, which have sometimes been overshadowed by his mathematical and scientific interests. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 273-274 [Access article in PDF] Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch, and William R. Newman, editors. Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. viii + 610. Cloth, $186.00. The nineteen papers of this weighty (handsomely produced, but expensive) volume are mostly devoted to the views of one thinker or group of persons on "corpuscularism" (see 17ff.), in (...) either physics or mathematics, with few synthetic or diachronic studies. Only a quarter of the volume is devoted to the medieval period: Danielle Jacquart on minima in the Salerno school of medicine (twelfth century); the late George Molland on Roger Bacon's and Grosseteste's "corpuscular tendencies"; Charles Lohr on Ramon Lull; John Murdoch on minima naturalia in the medieval and Renaissance periods; and the greater part of William Newman's study of corpuscularian conceptions in "Aristotelian alchemy" from Geber to Sennert. The early-modern part includes studies on mostly expected figures: Francesco Patrici, Giordano Bruno, the Northumberland circle, Francis Bacon, David Gorlaeus (a little-known Dutch theology student; 1591-1612, sic), Daniel Sennert, Honoré Fabri, Galileo, Gassendi, Charleton, Boyle, Locke, and Homberg. Alan Gabbey more generally distinguishes different patterns of explanations in mechanical philosophy.As far as I can judge, the authors are knowledgeable and competent, and the studies make important contributions. But just because this is a high-quality volume produced with the ambition of making a step toward rewriting the history of a major chapter in the history of science, its two significant and principled deficiencies must be pointed out.The volume follows the intention of "show[ing] the debt of early-modern matter theory to previous traditions and thereby [explaining] its bewildering heterogeneity" (back cover). Now, the study of the corpuscular traditions in the pre-modern period is certainly an important desideratum (although this volume again attends chiefly to the early modern corpuscularians). But the motivation and perspective here announced—the medieval period [End Page 273] is to be studied because early modern science is indebted to it—are astoundingly Whiggish. Worse: the study of the entire Arabic-Islamic tradition is dismissed, on the grounds that "Islamic atomism does not seem to have been of any influence upon Christian fourteenth-century atomism" (8): this is not only Whiggism, but also frank and explicit euro- and Christian-centrism, which in the beginning of the twenty-first century is simply stunning. The method amusingly consists in affirming the consequent: presupposing that "Islamic atomism" did not influence the West and early-modern science, no scholar was asked to examine whether or not this was indeed the case, with the congenial result that the volume seemingly confirms the initial presupposition. Q.E.D. Similarly and no less regrettably, the fact that (ps.-) Geber's Summa Perfectionis is not, as Lasswitz had thought, the translation of an Arabic work is here used as grounds on which to dismiss altogether his claim concerning the importance of the Arabic input (13, but see also 293). This way, incomprehension between civilizations is reinforced instead of being reduced, and I believe we did not need September 11 to know this.The thusly dismissed Mu'tazilite school of Islamic theology had important repercussions in Judaism, so that referring to it as "Islamic atomism" is misleading (see notably Hagai Ben-Shammai, "Studies in Karaite Atomism," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 6 [1985]: 243-93). The volume's forty-page cumulative bibliography, for which the editors are to be congratulated, reflects the volume's parochial viewpoint: H. A. Wolfson's important The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), with some 150 pages on atomism, is not included; nor is the (English version of the) landmark study by the late S. Pines, Studies in Islamic Atomism (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1997; the original 1936 German version is mentioned). Wolfson's study, incidentally, shows that the editors' presupposition (8) that the Kalâm tradition could have influenced the West only via the Latin translation of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed is unwarranted, for Isaac... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eclecticism and the Technologies of Discernment in Pietist PedagogyKelly J. WhitmerWhile the Franckesche Stiftungen (the Francke Foundations) of Halle/Saale are perhaps best known today as the institutional centre of German Pietism, throughout much of the eighteenth century they were widely regarded as a pedagogically innovative Schulstadt (or city of schools). The founder of this Schulstadt, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), was many things to many people: Pietist, radical Lutheran, theologian, (...) pedagogue, professor of Greek and Oriental languages, preacher, member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and proponent of a Protestant mission. Like most participants in what was initially a grassroots movement oriented around the personality of Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), a minister active in Frankfurt am Main around 1670 who sought to breathe new life into the Lutheran church,2 Francke rarely referred to himself as a Pietist. From his post at the University of Halle (founded in 1694), this Spenerian prote´gé set out to create a new "universal seminar" that would make the assimilation of many diverse points of view, identities, and competing strands of knowledge its [End Page 545] defining mandate. "My purpose," Francke wrote in a letter to a Pastor Ring from Grünebartau (October 29, 1712), "is to develop a universal institution, useful for bringing into a good and holy order all that is important for the Christianity of all orders of society and relates, in some way, to the healing power of the soul."3 His Schulstadt would "bring into order" a myriad of relationships around a single point and relied, quite deliberately I propose, on an eclectic methodology to do this.In recent years, the relationship of Francke's Schulstadt to the implementation of Brandenburg-Prussia's first compulsory schooling system and teacher training institutes has been better documented than in the past.4 Scholars of education have paid closer attention to the methodological innovations of Pietist pedagogy, and its points of convergence with the ideas of John Locke (1632–1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) have become subjects of mounting interest.5 Francke's significance for the history of education has been assessed mainly in terms of his ability to realize the pedagogically inclined reform projects of seventeenth-century figures, such as Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670).6 We know that the thousands of children who participated in the life of the Schulstadt very often left Halle to become actively involved as teachers and ministers throughout the German states. Several played pivotal roles in the development of the late eighteenth-century educational reform movement known as Philanthropismus and its associated practices and institutions.7 [End Page 546]Perhaps the most striking feature of Francke's Schulstadt was its curriculum, which featured innovative training regimens in applied mathematics for children from diverse social backgrounds.8 The scale and rigor of these programs were to be found nowhere else at the time and can be linked to the overtly pedagogical mandate of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (f. 1701). These regimens deliberately juxtaposed artisanal and learned knowledge and stressed the importance of the eye as a conciliatory medium.9 Despite having acquired largely anti-empiricist reputations over the years due to their lingering interest in alchemy and their roles in securing the banishment of the "rationalist" mathematician and philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754), from their community in 1723, careful consideration of what Halle Pietists were teaching in their schools suggests a different view. These historical actors reconciled categories of knowledge production and transmission often framed as oppositional—despite what several scholars have recently shown to be their clear interconnectedness.10I argue here for the predominance of eclecticism in the Schulstadt, including a pronounced emphasis on the "middling" mathematical and mechanical sciences as tools of conciliation and self-improvement. I seek to illustrate how eclecticism was much more than a Philosophiebegriff that was well received by some Pietists, as Walter Sparn has argued, but that it is better understood as a set of conciliatory practices, traces of which resonate in Pietist lesson plans.11 Teachers in Francke's schools integrated experimental philosophy into an educational program that was introducing children to the exercises of... (shrink)

Back in thirteenth-century Europe, in the early years of the great universities, learning was spiced with the danger of mob violence and a terrifyingly repressive religious censorship. Roger Bacon, a humble and devout English friar, seems an unlikely figure to challenge the orthodoxy of his day - yet he risked his life to establish the basis for true knowledge. Born c.1220, Bacon was passionately interested in the natural world and how things worked. Such dangerous topics were vetoed by his Order, (...) and it was only when a new Pope proved sympathetic that he began compiling his encyclopaedia on everything from optics to alchemy - the synopsis took a year and ran to 800,000 words and he was never to complete the work itself. Sadly, the enlightened Pope died, and Bacon was tried as a magician and incarcerated for ten years. Legend transformed Bacon into a sorcerer, 'Doctor Mirabilis', yet he taught that all magic was based on fraud, and his books were the first flowering of the scientific thinking that would transform our world. He advanced the understanding of optics, made geographical breakthroughs later used by Columbus, predicted everything from horseless carriages to the telescope, and stressed the importance of mathematics to science, a significance ignored for 400 years. His biggest contribution was to insist that a study of the natural world by observation and exact measurement was the surest foundation for truth. Clegg uncovers the realities of life in a medieval university and friary, setting out the shadowy facts of Bacon's life alongside his writings. The result is both a fascinating biography and a picture of the age. (shrink)

On Roger Bacon's life and works, by A. G. Little.--Der einfluss des Robert Grosseteste auf die wissenschaftliche richtung des Roger Bacon, von Ludwig Baur.--La place de Roger Bacon parmi les philosophes du XIIIe siècle, par François Picavet.--Roger Bacon and the Latin vulgate, by Francis Aidan, cardinal Gasquet.--Roger Bacon and philology, by S. A. Hirsch.--The place of Roger Bacon in the history of mathematics, by David Eugene Smith.--Roger Bacon und seine verdienste um die optik, von Eilhard Wiedemann.--Roger Bacons lehre von der (...) sinnlichen spezies und vom seḣvorgange, von Sebastian Vogl.--Roger Bacons art des wissenschaftlichen arbeitens dargestellt nach seiner schrift De speculis, von J. Würschmidt.--Roger Bacon et l'horreur du vide, par Pierre Duhem.--Roger Bacon, his relations to alchemy and chemistry, by M. M. Pattison Muir.--Roger Bacon and gunpowder, by H. W. L. Hime.--Roger Bacon and medicine, by E. Withington. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is the issue of alchemy in the scientific activity of Adam A. Kochanski. Polish Jesuit, Adam Kochanski S J was an unusual scholar in the Polish science of the 17th century. Kochanski was an excellent mathematician, one of his greatest achievement in mathematics is the solution of the famous squaring of the circle. He published his mathematical works in "Acta Eruditorium", one of the first scientific journals in 17th century Europe. Kochanski was a (...) professor of mathematics in Germany, Italy, Prague, Olomouc, Wroclaw and Warszawa. An interesting part Kochanski's activity is his correspondence with many scholars, mathematicans and philosophers, for example the exchange of letters with German philosopher and mathematican Gottfried W. Leibniz. (shrink)

On Roger Bacon's life and works, by A. G. Little. -- Der Einfluss des Robert Grosseteste auf die wissenschaftliche Richtung des Roger Bacon, von L. Baur. -- La place de Roger Bacon parmi les philosophes du xiie siècle, par F. Picavet. -- Roger Bacon and the Latin vulgate, by F. A. Gasquet. -- Roger Bacon and philology, by S. A. Hirsch. -- The place of Roger Bacon in the history of mathematics, by D. E. Smith. -- Roger Bacon und seine (...) Verdienste um die Optik, von E. Wiedemann. -- Roger Bacon's Lehre von der sinnlichen Spezies und vom Sehvorgange, von S. Vogl. -- Roger Bacon's art des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens dargestellt nach seineer Schrift De speculis, von Würschmidt. -- Roger Bacon et l'horreur du vide, par P. Duhem. -- Roger Bacon : his relations to alchemy and chemistry, by M. M. P. Muir. -- Roger Bacon and gunpowder, by H. W. L. Hime. -- Roger Bacon and medicine, by E. W, Withington. -- Roger Bacon in English literature, by Sir J. E. Sandys. -- Roger Bacon's works with references to the mss. printed editions, by A, G. Little (p. [375]-425). (shrink)

Leibniz's correspondence from his years spent in Paris (1672-1676) reflects his growth to mathematical maturity whereas that from the years 1676-1701 reveals his growth to maturity in science, technology and medicine in the course of which more than 2000 letters were exchanged with more than 200 correspondents. The remaining years until his death in 1716 witnessed above all the appearance of his major philosophical works. The focus of the present work is Leibniz's middle period and the core themes and (...) core texts from his multilingual correspondence are presented in English from the following subject areas: mathematics, natural philosophy, physics (and cosmology), power technology (including mining and transport), engineering and engineering science, projects (scientific, technological and economic projects), alchemy and chemistry, geology, biology and medicine. (shrink)

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists of all time, a thinker of extraordinary range and creativity who has left enduring legacies in mathematics and physics. While most famous for his Principia, his work on light and colour, and his discovery of the calculus, Newton devoted much more time to research in chemistry and alchemy, and to studying prophecy, church history and ancient chronology. This new edition of The Cambridge Companion to Newton provides authoritative introductions to these (...) further dimensions of his endeavours as well as to many aspects of his physics. It includes a revised bibliography, a new introduction and six new chapters: three updating previous chapters on Newton's mathematics, his chemistry and alchemy and the reception of his religious views; and three entirely new, on his religion, his ancient chronology and the treatment of continuous and discontinuous forces in his second law of motion. (shrink)

Known today mostly as an author of Romantic short stories and fairy tales for children, Prince Vladimir Odoyevskiy was a distinguished thinker of his time, philosopher and bibliophile. The scope of his interests includes also history of magic arts and alchemy, German Romanticism, Church music. An attempt to understand the peculiarity of eight specific modes used in chants of Russian Orthodox Church led him to his own musical theory based upon well-known writings by Zarlino, Leibniz, Euler, Prony. He realized (...) his theoretical ideas in an enharmonical piano with nineteen notes for every octave. His call for a different musical scale remained largely ignored in the nineteenth century, until the topic was raised anew by twentieth-century composers and musicians. (shrink)

The Ikhwan al-Safa' (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa 'il Ikhwan al-Safa' (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in mathematics, (...) logic, natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didactic fables. Epistles 6 to 8 are from the first division of the Epistles, on the propaedeutical and mathematical sciences. Epistle 6 develops ideas concerning natural numbers and their arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic ratios, marked by the influence of Nicomachus of Gerasa and of Euclid. The Brethren here emphasize practical applications of proportionality in music, medicine, and alchemy. Epistle 7 addresses theoretical scientific knowledge as directed towards the spiritual realities of souls, the goal of which is to actualize human potential; this epistle also presents a remarkable classification of sciences. Epistle 8 surveys material cultures in the Islamic mediaeval milieu, embellished by a consideration of the effects of the heavenly bodies on the predisposition of individuals to follow specific trades. These three epistles are, of course, underpinned by the Brethren's perennial tropes of the microcosm/macrocosm analogy and the emanative hierarchy of existents. (shrink)

In this volume of conference papers originally presented at the University of Oklahoma, a distinguished group of scholars examines episodes in the transmission of premodern science and provides new insights into its cultural, philosophical and historical significance.

This paper is a survey of Father Mersenne’s views about the classification of sciences, its reasons and its practical consequences. Some emphasis is put on the interconnection between Mersenne’s two majors ideas about the practice of science : scientific research is an activity mostly devoted to religious apology and to the edification of the people. This religious concern allows him to resist two of the most influential philosophical streams of his time, scepticism and alchemy, which provide some favorite opponents (...) to his works. We also show how an analogical kinship based on theological considerations and on the classification of sciences gives ground to the same kind of arguments shaping his views about arithmetic, language, and music. Finally, we focus on the connection between Mersenne’s theses, especially about the nature and virtue of language and sound, and a more general discussion of the scientific status of music and language in the context of the blooming of academies. (shrink)

Upon his death in 1895, Carl Schorlemmer, professor of chemistry at the Victoria University in Manchester/GB, left an extensive but unfinished and unpublished manuscript, which is now stored in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. It covers about 1100 pages and deals with the history of chemistry from antiquity to the second third of the 17th century. Based on a several years' study of this paper, an evaluation of its main parts (Chemical knowledge of antiquity/The age of alchemy/The (...) age of medical chemistry) is given. As compared with his bookThe Rise and Development of Organic Chemistry (Manchester/London 1879) Schorlemmer seemes to have overstepped the summit of scientific-historical efficiency in the „Contributions... . Some authors believe that he intended to write an universal history of chemistry from the Marxist point of view but this presumption cannot be supported. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays that relate in some way to the notion of a principle as it appears in early modern thought. Essays by James Franklin, J. C. Campbell, Alberto Vanzo, Anstey, and William R. Newman provide a survey of the usage of principles within particular subjects: the principles of early modern mathematics, equity law, corpuscularism, and chemistry or alchemy, respectively. Other essays, by Kristen Walsh and Michael LeBuffe, clarify a particular early modern thinker's understanding and (...) usage of the term 'principle.' Walsh's essay concerns Newton's usage and understanding of the term, while LeBuffe's concerns Spinoza's. Other essays, by Daniel Garber and Kiyoshi Shimokawa, clarify how an early... (shrink)

This clear and well-documented monograph is dedicated to the development of the interweaving of science and philosophy in Germany from the years following the French Revolution to Hegel’s death. The role played by chemistry has long been recognized as central and many studies have delved into it; and the same holds for the primacy of the “biocentric” standpoint, which was originally sponsored by Goethe. However, Poggi’s book has a much wider scope. It gives space to almost the whole scope of (...) science in those decades in Germany. It begins by dealing with the philosophical foundations of scientific investigation, as were provided, among others, by Kant in his Metaphysical Foundations of the Science of Nature. Goethe’s introduction of the notions of “form” and “polarity” is the subject of the second chapter. Chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to animal physiology, chapter 5 to physics and cosmology, and chapter 6 to Schelling’s arguments for proving the existence of the infinite in the finite by means of the notion of the world’s soul. With chapter 7 the investigation shifts to the individual sciences starting with mathematics, chapter 8 is dedicated to medicine, chapter 9 to chemistry, and chapter 10 to biology. Finally, the eleventh and last chapter considers neurophysiology and psychology. Only one discipline is missing, which is geology, and missing too is the discussion of two major issues such as alchemy and the connection of romantic science to literature. Poggi had to draw a line to avoid his research going out of proportion. (shrink)

Kurt Gdel was the most outstanding logician of the 20th century and a giant in the field. This book is part of a five volume set that makes available all of Gdel's writings. The first three volumes, already published, consist of the papers and essays of Gdel. The final two volumes of the set deal with Gdel's correspondence with his contemporary mathematicians, this fourth volume consists of material from correspondents from A-G.

For the purposes of this monograph, "by a degree" is meant a degree of recursive unsolvability. A degree [script bold]m is said to be minimal if 0 is the unique degree less than [script bold]m. Each of the six chapters of this self-contained monograph is devoted to the proof of an existence theorem for minimal degrees.

This volume presents the proceedings from the Eleventh Brazilian Logic Conference on Mathematical Logic held by the Brazilian Logic Society in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The conference and the volume are dedicated to the memory of professor Mario Tourasse Teixeira, an educator and researcher who contributed to the formation of several generations of Brazilian logicians. Contributions were made from leading Brazilian logicians and their Latin-American and European colleagues. All papers were selected by a careful refereeing processs and were revised and (...) updated by their authors for publication in this volume. There are three sections: Advances in Logic, Advances in Theoretical Computer Science, and Advances in Philosophical Logic. Well-known specialists present original research on several aspects of model theory, proof theory, algebraic logic, category theory, connections between logic and computer science, and topics of philosophical logic of current interest. Topics interweave proof-theoretical, semantical, foundational, and philosophical aspects with algorithmic and algebraic views, offering lively high-level research results. (shrink)

Debunking arguments against both moral and mathematical realism have been pressed, based on the claim that our moral and mathematical beliefs are insensitive to the moral/mathematical facts. In the mathematical case, I argue that the role of Hume’s Principle as a conceptual truth speaks against the debunkers’ claim that it is intelligible to imagine the facts about numbers being otherwise while our evolved responses remain the same. Analogously, I argue, the conceptual supervenience of the moral on (...) the natural speaks presents a difficulty for the debunker’s claim that, had the moral facts been otherwise, our evolved moral beliefs would have remained the same. (shrink)

Of all the traditional sciences it is alchemy based as it is in metallurgy that is directly concerned with the coming of the industrial order. In alchemical terms modern man lives in the Ferric Age and his state is best analogized to the properties of the metal iron, hard, cold, unbending but quick to succumb to corrosion and rust. The great ancient wisdom traditions of the world all anticipated this present age for it was already implicit in the technological (...) and other changes that brought on the dawn of history. These ancient traditions - dismissed as childish superstitions by the scientist contain ideas essential to the self-understanding that contemporary man so desperately needs. This is the central contention of the writings brought together in Primordial Alchemy & Modern Religion. Drawing upon many unexpected sources especially Plato and the ancient Greeks these wide-ranging, generous essays provide timely reiterations of ancient alchemical traditions and trace some pivotal themes that have continued in the theology and symbolism of the modern religions. This work restores some important keys for the recovery of a lost heritage of primordial wisdom, offering fresh perspectives on aspects of the Western and Islamic alchemical traditions in particular, and at the same time exploring the most distant roots of the modern impasse. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Early modern alchemy studied both matter and life, much like today's life sciences. What material life is and how it comes about intrigued alchemists. Many found the answer by assuming a vital principle that served as the source and cause of life. Recent literature has presented important cases in which vitalist formulations incorporated corpuscular or mechanical elements that were characteristic of the New Science and other cases in which vitalist thinking influenced important figures of the Scientific Revolution. Not (...) merely speculative, vitalist ideas also motivated chymical practice. The unity of life science and material science that is found in many formulations of Renaissance alchemy disintegrated in Georg Ernst Stahl's version of post-Cartesian vitalism. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, Nelson algebras have been extensively studied by distinguished scholars as the algebraic counterpart of Nelson's constructive logic with strong negation. Despite these studies, a comprehensive survey of the topic is currently lacking, and the theory of Nelson algebras remains largely unknown to most logicians. This paper aims to fill this gap by focussing on the essential developments in the field over the past two decades. Additionally, we explore generalisations of Nelson algebras, such as N4-lattices which (...) correspond to the paraconsistent version of Nelson's logic, as well as their applications to other areas of interest to logicians, such as duality and rough set theory. A general representation theorem states that each Nelson algebra is isomorphic to a subalgebra of a rough set-based Nelson algebra induced by a quasiorder. Furthermore, a formula is a theorem of Nelson logic if and only if it is valid in every finite Nelson algebra induced by a quasiorder. (shrink)

The landscape of seventeenth-century chemistry is complex, and it is impossible to find in it either a clear-cut distinction between alchemy and chemistry or a sort of simple identification of the two. The seventeenth-century cultural context contained a rich variety of "chemical" discourses with arguments ranging from specific experiments to the justification of the validity of chemistry and its novelty in terms of its extraordinary antiquity. On the basis of an analysis of the works by O. Borch, J.J. Glauber, (...) and J. J. Becher, this paper tries to demonstrate that a historical reconstruction of "chemistry" must consider these different levels of the chemical debate. Only then will it be possible to appreciate the outstanding role played by G.E. Stahl in founding modern chemistry. The paper argues in favor of a contextualization of the historical research on seventeenth-century chemistry. (shrink)

Greet Van Thienen vraagt zich af hoe we vrijheid kunnen vinden in de voortsnellende tijd. Wat is de alchemie van tijd en mens? Want hoewel tijd niet tastbaar is, drukt hij zich uit in alle levende wezens. Hoe werkt de tijd door ons heen? Wat kunnen wij ermee doen? Van Thienen onderneemt deze tijdreis samen met filosofen, schrijvers en wetenschappers die iets van het fenomeen tijd blootleggen. Denkers die aan bod komen zijn onder meer: Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Virgina Woolf, (...) Albert Einstein, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Paul Sartre en Byung-Chul Han. Zijn we tovenaarsleerlingen die, gebukt onder het vluchtige en snelle, toch het eeuwige blijven zoeken?"--Publisher information. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Alchemy now holds an important place in the history of science. Its current status contrasts with its former exile as a “pseudoscience” or worse and results from several rehabilitative steps carried out by scholars who made closer, less programmatic, and more innovative studies of the documentary sources. Interestingly, alchemy's outcast status was created in the eighteenth century and perpetuated thereafter in part for strategic and polemical reasons—and not only on account of a lack of historical understanding. (...) class='Hi'>Alchemy's return to the fold of the history of science highlights important features about the development of science and our changing understanding of it. (shrink)

This paper studies the English poems of Richard Crashaw from a historicist and formalist perspective. It specifically considers Crashaw’s poetry in its religious but also intellectual and early scien­tific context to investigate the frequently overlooked influence of science on his poetry. Metaphors drawn from alchemy and particularly from the trans­formation of matter to achieve its purification and spiritualisation enrich the poet’s expression of mystical devotion to underline that access to the spiritual as well as mystical union with Christ are (...) deeply rooted in the devotee’s body. Representations of the earth as a chemical laboratory focus on materiality and corporality to emphasise the constant movement animating matter. A form of spiritual alchemy underscores Crashaw’s Christocentrism and references to the metamorphoses of matter consistently aim to express mystical union. A meta-poetic analysis eventually highlights a significant analogy between reading and alchemical processes in order to demonstrate the anagogical aim of Crashaw’s verse and the way his poems work on his reader’s heart to lift his soul. References to liquefaction, distillation or sublimation echo the published works of mystics but alchemical conceits based on symbolically evocative topoï and polysemic vocabulary reinforce the importance of the corporal in the expe­rience of mystical union. (shrink)

Jon Elster has written a comprehensive, wide-ranging book on the emotions in which he considers the full range of theoretical approaches. Drawing on history, literature, philosophy and psychology, Elster presents a complete account of the role of the emotions in human behaviour. While acknowledging the importance of neurophysiology and laboratory experiment for the study of emotions, Elster argues that the serious student of the emotions can learn more from the great thinkers and writers of the past, from Aristotle to Jane (...) Austen. He attaches particular importance to the work of the French moralists, notably La Rochefoucauld, who demonstrated the way esteem and self-esteem shape human motivation. The book also maintains a running dialogue with economists and rational-choice theorists. Combining methodological and theoretical arguments with empirical case-studies and written with Elster's customary verve and economy, this book has great cross-disciplinary appeal. (shrink)

This book explores politics as a form of alchemy, understood as the transformation of entities through an alteration of their identities. Identifying this process as a common denominator of many political phenomena, such as communism, EU integration, mediatisation or globalisation, the author demonstrates not only the widespread presence of alchemical techniques in politics, but also the acceleration of their deployment. A study of the steady growth of power as it reaches a continuous and permanent stage, thus avoiding the inherent (...) difficulties connected with birth and death of political organisations and institutions, this volume reveals political alchemy to be a form of self-sustaining growth through sterile multiplication, devoid of meaning. Revealing both the integrative and disintegrative nature of a political process that, while appearing to work in the interests of all, in fact produces apathy, desperate mobilisation and despair by crushing concrete entities such as personality and tradition, Political Alchemy: Technology Unbounded will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in social theory and political thought. (shrink)

The phenomenon of "social alchemy", containing the idea of the possibility of creating a new man and a new world and passing through all radical thought, especially of the New and Modern times, had and has a habit of pouring out into violence, in the broadest sense of the word, — from the guillotine and concentration camps to modern "information colonization of consciousness". Having received technological support, when digital technologies and new communication systems cover almost the entire world community, (...) leaving no one outside of their comprehensive influence, the phenomenon of "social alchemy" has acquired a qualitatively different, special and global significance. At the same time, the goals, means and actors have changed, only its radical component has remained unchanged, striving to transform society and build such social, political and economic structures and relations, that would correspond to certain ideas of some elites (economic, political, intellectual) about what should the global world be like in order to ensure their interests to the greatest extent. (shrink)

Albertus Magnus’ alchemy is a subject that has attracted the attention of the scholars since the early decades of the 20th century. Yet, the research that has been conducted this far is characterised by its non philosophical character. As a matter of fact, the previous studies approached Albertus’ alchemy either in terms of history of science or of intellectual history. In this paper, I focus on Albertus’ definition of alchemical transmutation that is found in his De mineralibus and (...) I analyze it in terms of his theory of creation and of his theory of matter. Therefore, I show whether a re-creation of a metal is in accordance with Albertus’ philosophy and congruently I bring forth the Aristotle Graecus and the Aristotle Latinus that are found as background in his alchemical theory of transmutation. Ultimately this paper aims to show that the aforementioned theory is not an arbitrary statement from Albertus’ part, but the result of a serious philosophical endeavour. (shrink)