Daniel Garber

Estudos sobre Marin Mersenne enfatizam freqüentemente o serviço prestado por ele à ciência européia, por ajudar na circulação das idéias, tanto pela correspondência como por suas publicações. Mas o próprio Mersenne foi uma figura importante na Revolução Científica com seu próprio programa intelectual. O propósito do artigo é discutir o papel que o contato epistolar com a Itália exerceu no seu próprio desenvolvimento intelectual. Quero discutir também que a transmissão da ciência italiana para a França feita por Mersenne, no final do anos 1620 e início dos anos 1630, precisamente no momento em que Galileu estava em dificuldades em Roma, foi crucial para a derradeira transformação da ciência e filosofia européias. Minha tese é que por causa de seus contatos com a Italia Mersenne continua, de certo modo, a tradição jesuítica das matemáticas mistas que, em virtude da condenação de Galileu em 1633, não poderia por muito tempo ser praticada na Itália, uma tradição que conduzirá a Descartes, Gassendi, e à filosofia mecânica que dominará o restante do século

In recent years philosophers of science have turned away from positivist programs for explicating scientific rationality through detailed accounts of scientific procedure and turned toward large-scale accounts of scientific change. One important motivation for this was better fit with the history of science. Paying particular attention to the large-scale theories of Lakatos and Laudan I argue that the history of science is no better accommodated by the new large-scale theories than it was by the earlier positivist philosophies of science; both are, in their different ways, parochial to our conception of rationality. I further argue that the goal of scientific methodology is not explaining the past but promoting good scientific practice, and on this the large-scale methodologies have no obvious a priori advantages over the positivist methodologies they have tried to replace.

The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative overview of early-modern philosophy written by an international team of specialists. As with previous Cambridge histories of philosophy the subject is treated by topic and theme, and since history does not come packaged in neat bundles, the subject is also treated with great temporal flexibility, incorporating frequent reference to medieval and Renaissance ideas. The basic structure of the volumes corresponds to the way an educated seventeenth-century European might have organised the domain of philosophy. Thus, the history of science, religious doctrine, and politics feature very prominently. The narrative that unfolds begins with an intellectual world dominated by a synthesis of Aristotelianism and scholastic philosophy, but by the end of the period the mechanistic or 'corpuscularian' philosophy has emerged and exerted its full impact on traditional metaphysics, ethics, theology, logic, and epistemology.

i would like to thank Michael Della Rocca for his thoughtful response to my remarks. Needless to say, I am not entirely convinced by everything he says, but I am also sure that he did not think that I would be! The substantive points on which we differ are complex, and deserve careful consideration and argument; this is not the occasion on which to thrash out those differences. But I would like to add a few words about the methodological differences that Della Rocca notes at the end of his contribution.In rejecting my attribution of a “superhero” methodology to his Spinoza, Della Rocca suggests the following contrast between our approaches:[P]erhaps the most general and appropriate way to see the methodological..

In the Discours de la méthode, Descartes presents himself as a heroic figure, standing up against the current Aristotelian orthodoxy in philosophy, and offering something new, a mechanist physics and the metaphysics to go along with it. But Descartes was by no means the only challenger to Aristotelian natural philosophy: by Descartes’s day, there were many. Descartes was read as one of this group, generally called the novatores (innovators) in Latin, and often severely criticized for their advocacy of the new. Descartes himself wanted to separate his philosophy from that of the novatores, who were thought to seek novelty rather than truth. But it was not so easy to distance himself. Many contemporary commentators, like Charles Sorel, put Descartes squarely in their camp, but at exactly the moment when novelty and innovation in natural philosophy was changing from being worthy of scorn to being praiseworthy.

La physique métaphysique de Descartes permet de synthétiser plusieurs aspects de la philosophie naturelle de Descartes et de comprendre pourquoi elle repose sur une approche métaphysique. Cet ouvrage, qui n'a jusqu'à aujourd'hui aucun équivalent même en France, se présente comme une sorte de manuel de physique cartésienne, une introduction à sa philosophie mécaniste, telle que lui-même, ou un homme de son époque, bienveillant, mais non dénué de réserves critiques, l'aurait présentée. C'est, en effet, en tant que métaphysicien, c'est-à-dire en ayant fait de la métaphysique le fondement de sa physique, que Descartes tranche les questions qui se posent au sujet des atomes, des espaces vides, des lois de la matière. Par là, Descartes rompt avec la tradition et se démarque de son époque, souligne Daniel Garber. Mais il ne se borne pas à ce constat : il expose aussi soigneusement les termes du débat et les nombreuses controverses auxquelles les options métaphysiques de Descartes ont donné lieu. Au fur et à mesure se dégage le portrait d'un homme de plus en plus préoccupé par la construction de son système et de moins en moins attaché à résoudre des problèmes particuliers, fussent-ils scientifiques ou métaphysiques.

The Cambridge History of 17th Century Philosophy offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative overview of early-modern philosophy written by an international team of specialists. As with previous Cambridge histories of philosophy the subject is treated by topic and theme, and since history does not come packaged in neat bundles, the subject is also treated with great temporal flexibility, incorporating frequent reference to medieval and Renaissance ideas. The basic structure of the volumes corresponds to the way an educated seventeenth - century European might have organized the domain of philosophy. Thus, the history of science, religious doctrine, and politics feature very prominently. The narrative that unfolds begins with an intellectual world dominated by a synthesis of Aristotelianism and scholastic philosophy, but by the end of the period the mechanistic or "corpuscularian" philosophy has emerged and exerted its full impact on traditional metaphysics, ethics, theology, logic, and epistemology