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98Atomism, Lynceus, and the Fate of Seventeenth-Century MicroscopyEarly Science and Medicine 1 (1): 1-27. 1996.Recent scholarship, focusing on the rapid decline of microscopy after the late 1680's, has shown that the limitations of microscopy and the ambivalent meaning of its findings led to a wide-spread sense of frustration with the new instrument. The present article tries to connect this fall from favor with the microscope's equally surprising but hitherto little noticed late rise to prominence. The crucial point is that when the microscope, more than a decade after the telescope, finally managed to …Read more
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65An Aristotelian Watchdog As Avant-Garde PhysicistThe Monist 84 (4): 542-561. 2001.There are many good reasons for seeing Aristotelian hylemorphism and atomism as diametrically opposed theories of matter. Aristotle himself had forcefully combatted the physical model of Leucippus and Democritus, whose ontology consisted of indivisible material bodies moving in an immaterial void, presenting his own model as an alternative. This alternative excluded both indivisibles and the void and postulated instead a plenist world made up of substances all of which were infinitely divisible …Read more
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57Thoughts and Circumstances of Sébastien Basson. Analysis, Micro-History, QuestionsEarly Science and Medicine 1 (1): 1-72. 1997.The Philosophiae naturalis adversus Aristotelem libri XII of 1621 is the first textbook in natural philosophy to combine anti-Aristotelian arguments with explicit corpuscularianism. While its uniqueness resides in the pioneering role it played in the history of the neo-atomist movement, its fateful attraction lies in the almost complete anonymity of its author. No other novator in the history of early modern thought has been as elusive as the man known as Basso, Basson, Bassus, or Bassone. This …Read more
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55What To Do With Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy? A Taxonomic ProblemPerspectives on Science 8 (2): 164-195. 2000.
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54The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from Antiquity to the Seventeenth CenturyTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 65 (4): 779-780. 2003.
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43Daniel Sennert’s Slow Conversion from Hylemorphism to AtomismGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 26 (2): 99-121. 2005.Daniel Sennert is one of the more neglected big figures of that seventeenth-century process that goes by the shorthand name of Scientific Revolution. Born in Breslau/wroclaw in 1572, he was professor of medicine at the University of Wittenberg from 1602 until his death in 1637. However, his fame and importance were not due to his classroom teaching but to his writings, which were reprinted throughout the century in Germany, France, England, Italy, and the Netherlands, and partially translated in…Read more
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41Hockney's Secret Knowledge, Vanvitelli's Camera ObscuraEarly Science and Medicine 10 (2): 315-339. 2005.This article opens with a distinction between David Hockney's strong and weak theses. According to the strong thesis, in the period 1430-1860, optical tools were used in the production of paintings; according to the weak thesis, mirrors and lenses merely inspired their naturalistic look. It will be argued that while for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there is little evidence in favor of the strong thesis, the case is different for the seventeenth century, for which the use of optical ins…Read more
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33John Emery Murdoch (10 May 1927–16 September 2010)Early Science and Medicine 16 (2): 147-152. 2011.
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32Extracts from a paper laboratory: the nature of Francis Bacon’s Sylva sylvarumIntellectual History Review 27 (2): 171-202. 2017.
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28Journals under Threat: A Joint Response from History of Science, Technology and Medicine EditorsEarly Science and Medicine 14 (4): 441-444. 2009.
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23Marco Beretta. La rivoluzione culturale di Lucrezio: Filosofia e scienza nell’antica Roma. 311 pp., figs., index. Rome: Carocci Editore, 2016. €32 .Lucrezio. De rerum natura: Editio princeps . Edited by Marco Beretta. 271 pp., figs. Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2016. €150 (review)Isis 108 (1): 174-176. 2017.
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22Marie Boas hall, Henry oldenburg: Shaping the Royal society. Oxford: Oxford university press, 2002. Pp. XII+369. Isbn 0-19-851053-5. 60.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 37 (2): 201-203. 2004.
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20Ofer Gal and Raz Chen-Morris - Baroque Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. 352, index. $45.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 4 (2): 379-382. 2014.
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19The late origins of the timeline, or: three paradoxes explainedAnnals of Science. forthcoming.We are all used to drawing straight lines to represent time, and above them, we plot historical events or physical or economic data. What to us is a self-evident convention, is however of an astonishingly recent date: it emerged only in the second half of the eighteenth century. To us, this late date seems paradoxical and cries out for an explanation. How else did earlier periods measure change, if not as a function of time? it will be argued that since Antiquity, time was taken to measure chang…Read more
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16Elements, Principles and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (review)British Journal for the History of Science 37 (1): 103-104. 2004.
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15Vincent Jullien. Philosophie naturelle et géométrie au XVIIe siècle. . 477 pp., figs., table, index. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006. €83 (review)Isis 99 (1): 183-184. 2008.
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15Gideon Manning . Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy. x + 248 pp., illus., index. Leiden: Brill, 2012. $144, €105 (review)Isis 105 (1): 222-223. 2014.
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14Le passioni degli atomi: Montanari e Rossetti, una polemica tra galileiani by Susana Gomez Lopez (review)Isis 89 725-726. 1998.
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14Theatrum philosophicum: Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (review)Isis 102 362-364. 2011.
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13Theology and Science in the Orthodox World: Some Doubts from a Latin PerspectiveIsis 107 (3): 567-572. 2016.
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Radboud UniversityFaculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies
Faculty Of Science - Department Of Philosophy - Institute For Science In SocietyProfessor
Areas of Specialization
History of Western Philosophy |
Philosophical Traditions |
Areas of Interest
History of Western Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |
Philosophical Traditions |