Certain Philosophical Questions

Certain Philosophical Questions PDF Author: J. E. McGuire
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521530668
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Isaac Newton wrote the manuscript Questiones quaedam philosophicae at the very beginning of his scientific career. This small notebook thus affords rare insight into the beginnings of Newton's thought and the foundations of his subsequent intellectual development. The Questiones contains a series of entries in Newton's hand that range over many topics in science, philosophy, psychology, theology, and the foundations of mathematics. These notes, written in English, provide a very detailed picture of Newton's early interests, and record his critical appraisal of contemporary issues in natural philosophy. Written predominantly in 1664-5, they give a significant perspective on Newton's thought just prior to his annus mirabilis, 1666. This volume provides a complete transcription of the Questiones, together with an 'expansion' into modern English, and a full editorial commentary on the content and significance of the notebook in the development of Newton's thought. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Newton and the intellectual foundations of science.

Certain Philosophical Questions

Certain Philosophical Questions PDF Author: J. E. McGuire
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521530668
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book

Book Description
Isaac Newton wrote the manuscript Questiones quaedam philosophicae at the very beginning of his scientific career. This small notebook thus affords rare insight into the beginnings of Newton's thought and the foundations of his subsequent intellectual development. The Questiones contains a series of entries in Newton's hand that range over many topics in science, philosophy, psychology, theology, and the foundations of mathematics. These notes, written in English, provide a very detailed picture of Newton's early interests, and record his critical appraisal of contemporary issues in natural philosophy. Written predominantly in 1664-5, they give a significant perspective on Newton's thought just prior to his annus mirabilis, 1666. This volume provides a complete transcription of the Questiones, together with an 'expansion' into modern English, and a full editorial commentary on the content and significance of the notebook in the development of Newton's thought. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Newton and the intellectual foundations of science.

Certain Philosophical Questions: Newton's Trinity Notebook

Certain Philosophical Questions: Newton's Trinity Notebook PDF Author: James E. MacGuire
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description


The Janus Faces of Genius

The Janus Faces of Genius PDF Author: Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521524872
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
In this major re-evaluation of Isaac Newton's intellectual life, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs shows how his pioneering work in mathematics, physics, and cosmology was intertwined with his study of alchemy. Directing attention to the religious ambience of the alchemical enterprise of early modern Europe, Dobbs argues that Newton understood alchemy - and the divine activity in micromatter to which it spoke - to be a much needed corrective to the overly mechanized system of Descartes. The same religious basis underlay the rest of his work. To Newton it seemed possible to obtain partial truths from many different approaches to knowledge, be it textual work aimed at the interpretation of prophecy, the study of ancient theology and philosophy, creative mathematics, or experiments with prisms, pendulums, vegetating minerals, light, or electricity. Newton's work was a constant attempt to bring these partial truths together, with the larger goal of restoring true natural philosophy and true religion.

Gassendi the Atomist

Gassendi the Atomist PDF Author: Lynn Sumida Joy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521522397
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
An account of Gassendi's life and work, illuminating the influence of humanism on seventeenth-century thought.

Newton: Philosophical Writings

Newton: Philosophical Writings PDF Author: Isaac Newton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107042380
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This revised edition contains a wide range of Newton's writings that have influenced the development of philosophy in modern Europe.

Newton: Philosophical Writings

Newton: Philosophical Writings PDF Author: Andrew Janiak
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316061302
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) left a voluminous legacy of writings. Despite his influence on the early modern period, his correspondence, manuscripts, and publications in natural philosophy remain scattered throughout many disparate editions. In this volume, Newton's principal philosophical writings, including excerpts from the Principia and the Opticks and a corrected translation of 'De Gravitatione', are collected in a single place. This newly expanded second edition of Philosophical Writings contains new excerpts from Newton's earliest optical writings, some of his unpublished reflections on the interpretation of Scriptural passages that concern the Earth's motion, and his correspondence with important figures in his day, including the theologian Richard Bentley, the mathematician Roger Cotes, and the philosopher G. W. Leibniz. The excerpts show in depth how Newton developed a number of highly controversial views concerning space, time, motion and matter and then defended them against the withering criticisms of his contemporaries.

The Spatial Infinite at Greenwich in Works by Christopher Wren, James Thornhill, and James Thomson

The Spatial Infinite at Greenwich in Works by Christopher Wren, James Thornhill, and James Thomson PDF Author: Ann Stewart Balakier
Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press
ISBN: 9780773490574
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The Greenwich connection with Newtonian science is exemplified by Sir Christopher Wren's spatially-extended, open-center design for the Greenwich Naval Hospital complex, the site of the Royal Observatory, and his application of Newtonian "conics" to the site.

Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion

Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion PDF Author: John Brooke
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191556343
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The separation of science and religion in modern secular culture can easily obscure the fact that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe ideas about nature were intimately related to ideas about God. Readers of this book will find fresh and exciting accounts of a phenomenon common to both science and religion: deviation from orthodox belief. How is heterodoxy to be measured? How might the scientific heterodoxy of particular thinkers impinge on their religious views? Would heterodoxy in religion create a predisposition towards heterodoxy in science? Might there be a homology between heterodox views in both domains? Such major protagonists as Galileo and Newton are re-examined together with less familiar figures in order to bring out the extraordinary richness of scientific and religious thought in the pre-modern world.

Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings

Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings PDF Author: Isaac Newton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521538480
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This volume collects together Newton's principal philosophical writings for the first time.

Philosophical Imagination

Philosophical Imagination PDF Author: Boris Vezjak
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527570711
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Thought experiments by ancient philosophers are often open to debate: in what sense did their reasoning really concern thought experimentation? For instance, in Plato’s Republic, Glaucon uses the myth of Gyges to demonstrate why people who practice justice do so unwillingly. A challenge, posed to Socrates and provided through some sort of thought experiment by imagining the effects of using the ring of invisibility, was intended to answer the question of human nature and our basis for the inclination towards justice or injustice. This collection expands the current, but rare, topic of whether it is possible to articulate a discussion about thought experiments and their arguments from the historical perspective of philosophy and science. It may sometimes seem that, in a loose sense, any philosophical reflection can already be interpreted as some form of thought experiment. Although the functions of it are very diverse and complex, and often closely linked to other cognitive tools, such as visualization, imagination or idealization, the contributions in this book provide new insights into how the concept of a thought experiment coincides with more modern perceptions. The purpose of the book is to show how philosophers, already in antiquity, began to use thought experiments and argumentation to convey theories in an accessible manner and how philosophical hypotheses, often being subjective and impossible to prove through empirical evidence, helped to promote scientific knowledge and discoveries. Different authors develop several lines of argumentation, claiming that philosophical thinking can be understood by comparing it to scientific experimenting, or vice versa: if empirical evidence is usually necessary for science, thought experiments may be used to develop a hypothesis or to prepare for experimentation. The analysis of historical examples of thought experiments might also contribute to a better understanding of philosophical endeavour in antiquity as a whole.