Dana Jalobeanu

This paper investigates some examples of Baconian experimentation, coming from Bacon’s ‘scientific’ works, i.e. his Latin natural histories and the posthumous Sylva Sylvarum. I show that these experiments fulfill a variety of epistemic functions. They have a classificatory function, being explicitly used to delimitate and define new fields of investigation. They also play an important role in concept formation. Some of the examples discussed in this paper show how Francis Bacon developed instruments and technologies for the production of new phenomena, using them subsequently to define new concepts. In some other cases, experiments can also play and important role in modeling natural phenomena. In examining the role and functions of Baconian experimentation, this paper uses common topics in philosophy of the scientific experiment. With this, it attempts to bridge the gap between the more historical Baconian studies and the contemporary philosophy of science. My examples are chosen with two purposes. On the one hand I intend to show that Bacon was fully aware of the diversity of epistemic functions experiments can play in the process of discovery. On the other hand, these examples are also chosen with the purpose of illustrating a somewhat more general claim, namely that a thorough investigation of Bacon’s natural and experimental histories can unveil a more complex picture of the relations between theory and experiment than it has been usually assumed.

One of the main problems of Descartes’s natural philosophy is the reconstruction of bodies in interactions and of the forces associated with them. It is a problem bearing on various important philosophical issues, from the interaction between God and matter, to the famous problem of secondary causation. The main problem of such attempt is that in Descartes’ system, bodies are no more than extended geometrical shapes. There have been several recent debates in the literature bearing on various interpretations of Descartes’ problem and the possible reconstruction of forces. My paper discusses some of them, while pointing to the significant difference between those interpretations focusing on associated metaphysical issues, and the specific questions connected with the physics of interactions. Then, I try to reconstruct Descartes’ famous problems of collisions, pointing to the specific definition of physical bodies associated with the second part of the Principes. The paper demonstrates that in the attempt to reconstruct a new physics, Descartes gave a definition of physical bodies that leads to a very peculiar way of dealing with secondary causes and interactions

This chapter examines how the problem of the nature of body had become the central debate in the field of natural philosophy in England by the middle of the seventeenth century. It explains that the nature of the physical body is one of the major problems of seventeenth-century natural philosophy and that it began, at least in part, as a byproduct of a change in the philosophical vocabulary. The chapter also evaluates solutions proposed to address the problem concerning the nature of body, including those derived from theory of matter and mixed mathematics.