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30Newton’s notion and practice of unificationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36 (1): 61-78. 2005.n this paper I deal with a neglected topic with respect to unification in Newton’s Principia. I will clarify Newton’s notion and practice of unification . In order to do so, I will use the recent theories on unification as tools of analysis . I will argue, after showing that neither Kitcher’s nor Schurz’s account aptly capture Newton’s notion and practice of unification, that Salmon’s later work is a good starting point for analysing this notion and its practice in the Principia. Finally, I will…Read more
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29In this essay, I will bring several hitherto neglected sources, which pertain to Petrus van Musschenbroek’s unpublished manuscripts, to the fore. The folios at hand show that Musschenbroek read and actively engaged with Spinoza’s Ethica. More precisely, it will be shown that Musschenbroek held clear-cut anti-Spinozistic convictions.
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27In this essay, a manuscript description and analysis of Isaac Newton's manuscript 'Of the Church' is provided.
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26Reid's adaptation and radicalization of Newton's natural philosophyHistory of European Ideas 32 (2): 173-189. 2006.For Thomas Reid, Isaac Newton's scientific methodology in natural philosophy was a source of inspiration for philosophical methodology in general. I shall look at how Reid adapted Newton's views on methodology in natural philosophy. We shall see that Reid radicalized Newton's methodology and, thereby, begins to pave the way for the positivist movement, of which the origin is traditionally associated with the Frenchman Auguste Comte. In the Reidian adaptation of Newtonianism, we can already notic…Read more
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25The Secret History of Hermes: Hermeticism from Ancient Times to Modern TimesAnnals of Science 66 (2): 294-295. 2009.
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25Newton's training in the Aristotelian textbook tradition: from effects to causes and backHistory of Science 43 (3): 217-237. 2005.
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24Noodzakelijkheid bij William Whewell: De ontwikkeling Van een conceptTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 69 (2). 2007.The immense oeuvre of William Whewell (1794-1886), a Victorian monument by itself, has to some extent been treated in a stepmotherly fashion by philosophers and historiansof philosophy. This paper attempts to conceptually clarify Whewell's notion of necessity, which was a core notion in his philosophical project. The author also sketches in broad lines the historical development of this notion in Whewell's thinking and points tothe intertwinement between Whewell's philosophy and theology. Whewel…Read more
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23I. Bernard Cohen and George E. Smith , The Cambridge Companion to Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 514 pp., $23.99 (review)Philosophy of Science 72 (3): 506-508. 2005.
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22The Cavendish Experiment as a Tool for Historical Understanding of ScienceScience & Education 21 (1): 87-108. 2012.
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20De rol van causaliteit binnen de huidige natuurkundeAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 106 (1): 37-41. 2014.Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
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19Whewell on necessity. A study of its development (William Whewell)Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 69 (2): 239-265. 2007.
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18An editorial history of Newton’s regulae philosophandiEstudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia) 51. 2015.
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18"ignorance Is Bliss": On Bernard Nieuwentijt's Docta Ignorantia and His Insight in Scientific IdealisationRivista di Storia Della Filosofia 4. 2007.
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16'Newtonian'elements in locke, hume, and reid, or: how far can one stretch a label?Enlightenment and Dissent 25 62-105. 2009.
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16The status of theory and hypothesesIn Peter R. Anstey (ed.), The Oxford handbook of British philosophy in the seventeenth century, Oxford University Press. pp. 169. 2013.This chapter examines the series of drastic epistemological and methodological transformations in the status of hypotheses in British natural philosophy during the seventeenth century. It explains that hypotheses played a rather marginal role in Francis Bacon's methodological thought because he believed they lacked any physical content, although they occupied a centre stage in the Bacon-inspired natural philosophy program of Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. The chapter mentions that Boyle and Hook…Read more
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15Andrew Janiak;, Eric Schliesser . Interpreting Newton: Critical Essays. x + 439 pp., bibl., index. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. $120 (review)Isis 104 (3): 617-618. 2013.
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15Eric Jorink and Ad Maas, eds. Newton and the Netherlands: How Isaac Newton Was Fashioned in the Dutch Republic. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2013. Pp. 256. €39.50 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 4 (1): 189-192. 2014.
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14Who’s the greatest of them all?Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 113 (1): 3-24. 2021.Who’s the greatest of them all? A non-technical explication of Newton’s method in the Principia accompanied by some philosophical reflections In this essay, I seek to explicate the methodology which Newton used in the Principia in a non-technical way. Close attention will be paid to some important results in Books I and III of the Principia and to Newton’s argument for universal gravitation. Based on their discussion, Newton’s key inferential strategies will be brought to the fore. In addition, …Read more
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14‘s Gravesande's Appropriation of Newton's Natural Philosophy, Part I: Epistemological and Theological IssuesCentaurus 56 (1): 31-55. 2014.In this essay I reassess Willem Jacob ‘s Gravesande's Newtonianism. I draw attention to ‘s Gravesande's a-causal rendering of physics which went against Newton's causal understanding of natural philosophy and to his attempt to establish a solid foundation for the certainty of Newton's natural philosophy, which he considered as a powerful antidote against the theological aberrations of Descartes and especially Spinoza. I argue that, although ‘s Gravesande clearly took inspiration from Newton's na…Read more
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13Petrus van Musschenbroek and Newton’s ‘vera stabilisque Philosophandi methodus’Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 38 (4): 279-304. 2015.
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13Curing Pansophia through Eruditum Nescire: Bernard Nieuwentijt’s Epistemology of ModestyHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 7 (2): 272-301. 2017.Baruch Spinoza’s (1632–77)Tractatus theologico-politicus (1669 or 1670) caused outrage across the Dutch Republic, for it obliterated the carefully installed separation between philosophy and theology. The posthumous publication of Spinoza’s Ethica, which is contained in his Opera posthuma (1677), caused similar consternation. It was especially the mathematical order in which the Ethica was composed that caused fierce opposition, for its mathematical appearance gave the impression that Spinoza’s …Read more
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13In this article, we document how, in the public arena, British readers of the first edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687) tried to make sense of the relation between gravity, matter, and divine and natural causation—an issue on which Newton had remained entirely silent in the first edition of the Principia. We show that readers attached new meanings to the Principia so that parts of it migrated to a different intellectual debate. It will be shown that one …Read more
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12Reassessing the Radical EnlightenmentRoutledge. 2017.The Radical Enlightenment refers to a fascinating movement within the Enlightenment that challenged traditional forms of religious, philosophical, and political authority and promoted social reform, freedom, democratic values, social equality, and libertas philosophandi. The study of the Radical Enlightenment focuses on the thought of freethinkers, atheists, pantheists, Spinozists, political reformers, and other kindred spirits. Over the last thirty years scholarly writing on, and about the very…Read more
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11Recent findings on Newton's heretical beliefs in the five draft versions of the General Scholium, which was added to the second edition of the Principia in 1713, are discussed here. We shall use these snapshots as a tool to gain understanding into the process of composition of the theological material from the General Scholium
Areas of Specialization
General Philosophy of Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
General Philosophy of Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |