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155Occult qualities and the experimental philosophy: Active principles in pre-Newtonian matter theoryHistory of Science 24 (4): 335-381. 1986.
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123Gravity and De gravitatione: the development of Newton’s ideas on action at a distanceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (1): 11-27. 2011.This paper is in three sections. The first establishes that Newton, in spite of a well-known passage in a letter to Richard Bentley of 1692, did believe in action at a distance. Many readers may see this merely as an act of supererogation, since it is so patently obvious that he did. However, there has been a long history among Newton scholars of allowing the letter to Bentley to over-ride all of Newton’s other pronouncements in favour of action at a distance, with devastating effects on our und…Read more
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97A cambridge platonist's materialism: Henry more and the concept of soulJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1): 172-195. 1986.
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93Marjorie Hope Nicolson , The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and their Friends, 1642–1684. Revised Edition with an Introduction and New Material Edited by Sarah Hutton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. xxix + 592. ISBN 0-19-824876-8. £55.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 26 (3): 357-358. 1993.
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90Hobbes, Galileo, and the Physics of Simple Circular MotionsHobbes Studies 29 (1): 9-38. 2016._ Source: _Volume 29, Issue 1, pp 9 - 38 Hobbes tried to develop a strict version of the mechanical philosophy, in which all physical phenomena were explained only in terms of bodies in motion, and the only forces allowed were forces of collision or impact. This ambition puts Hobbes into a select group of original thinkers, alongside Galileo, Isaac Beeckman, and Descartes. No other early modern thinkers developed a strict version of the mechanical philosophy. Natural philosophies relying solely …Read more
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64History of Mathematical Sciences Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and certainty in seventeenth-century England: a study of the relationships between natural science, religion, history, law, and literature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp. x + 347. ISBN 0-691-05379-0. £26.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 17 (2): 232-232. 1984.
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44Animism and Empiricism: Copernican Physics and the Origins of William Gilbert's Experimental MethodJournal of the History of Ideas 62 (1): 99-119. 2001.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 99-119 [Access article in PDF] Animism and Empiricism: Copernican Physics and the Origins of William Gilbert's Experimental Method John Henry In the second year of this journal's run, way back in 1941, appeared Edgar Zilsel's classic and still widely cited paper on The Origins of William Gilbert's Experimental Method. 1 Focusing on Gilbert's De magnete of 1600, undoubtedly a seminal text in…Read more
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40Seventeenth Century James R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, radical protestantism and the early enlightenment. Cambridge: University Press, 1983. Pp. viii + 222. ISBN 0-521-24876-0. £19.50 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 17 (1): 111-112. 1984.
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37Knowledge is Power: Francis Bacon and the Method of ScienceTotem Books. 2002.A major figure in British political history, Francis Bacon is also one of the great names in the history of science.
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36Primary and Secondary Causation in Samuel Clarke’s and Isaac Newton’s Theories of GravityIsis 111 (3): 542-561. 2020.Samuel Clarke is best known to historians of science for presenting Isaac Newton’s views to a wider audience, especially in his famous correspondence with G. W. Leibniz. Clarke’s independent writings, however, reveal positions that do not derive from, and do not coincide with, Newton’s. This essay compares Clarke’s and Newton’s ideas on the cause of gravity, with a view to clarifying our understanding of Newton’s views. There is evidence to suggest that Newton believed God was directly responsib…Read more
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33Defending Copernicus and Galileo: Critical Reasoning in the Two AffairsIntellectual History Review 20 (4): 527-530. 2010.No abstract
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25Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xiv + 409. ISBN 0-521-43496-3. £35.00, $54.95 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 28 (1): 101-102. 1995.
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24R.G.W. Anderson and Christopher Lawrence, . Science, medicine and dissent: Joseph Priestley . Papers celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Priestley, together with a catalogue of an exhibition held at the Royal Society and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. London: Wellcome Trust/Science Museum, 1987. Pp. xii + 105. ISBN 0-901805-28-9. £9.95 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 22 (3): 388-390. 1989.
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22Peter Alexander. Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles: Locke and Boyle on the Natural World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. 331. ISBN 0-521-26707-2. £27.50 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 19 (3): 357-358. 1986.
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21Newton, the sensorium of God, and the cause of gravityScience in Context 33 (3): 329-351. 2020.ArgumentIt is argued that the sensorium of God was introduced into theQuaestionesadded to the end of Newton’sOptice(1706) as a way of answering objections that Newton had failed to provide a causal account of gravity in thePrincipia. The discussion of God’s sensorium indicated that gravity must be caused by God’s will. Newton did not leave it there, however, but went on to show how God’s will created active principles as secondary causes of gravity. There was nothing unusual in assuming that God…Read more
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14Francis Bacon, the instauratio magna: Last writings. Edited with introduction, notes, commentaries, and facing-page translations by Graham Rees. The oxford Francis Bacon, XIII. Oxford: Clarendon press, 2000. Pp. xcvi+363. Isbn 0-19-818470-0. £80·00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 35 (1): 97-123. 2002.
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14The Origins of Modern Science: Henry Oldenburg's ContributionBritish Journal for the History of Science 21 (1): 103-109. 1988.
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13J. E. McGuire and Martin Tamny. Certain Philosophical Questions: Newton's Trinity Notebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. xii + 519. ISBN 0-521-23164-7. £50.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 18 (3): 354-356. 1985.
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13Hobbes's Mechanical Philosophy and Its English CriticsIn Marcus P. Adams (ed.), A Companion to Hobbes, Wiley-blackwell. 2021.This chapter focuses on the English response to Thomas Hobbes as a mechanical philosopher. Hobbes's mechanical philosophy was by no means merely derivative from Descartes's Principia philosophiae; indeed, Hobbes came closer than anyone else to developing a mechanistic system to match it. Hobbes's system was a carefully thought‐out and uniquely original system of mechanical philosophy, and none of his contemporaries, not even his staunchest critics, ever considered it to be simply derived from Ca…Read more
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12‘concerning Natural Experimental Philosophie’: Meric Casaubon And The Royal Society (review)British Journal for the History of Science 16 (2): 205-207. 1983.
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12Michael Hunter , Letters and Papers of Robert Boyle: A Guide to the Manuscripts and Microfilm. Collections from the Royal Society. Bethesda, Maryland: University Publications of America, 1992. Pp. xlix + 90. ISBN 1-55655-217-3. No price given. - Peter Jones , Sir Isaac Newton: A Catalogue of Manuscripts and Papers Collected and Published on Microfilm by Chadwyck-Healey. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1991. Pp. xi + 148. ISBN 0-85964-226-7. £50.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 27 (1): 115-116. 1994.
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8Isaac Newton: ciencia y religión en la unidad de su pensamientoEstudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia) 38 69-102. 2008.Una de las principales razones para el éxito de la filosofía natural de Newton fue el papel que ésta tuvo al desarrollar una teología natural valiosa. Además, Newton mismo publicó las implicaciones teológicas de su propia filosofía natural. Aunque en la primera edición de los Principia no hay ninguna señal de Dios, para la segunda edición (1713) Newton introdujo un "Escolio General" en el que explícitamente discutía la relación entre Dios y su Creación. La obsesión de Newton por la interpretació…Read more
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8Isaac Newton y el problema de la acción a distanciaEstudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia) 35 189-226. 2007.La acción a distancia se ha considerado muy a menudo como un medio de explicación inaceptable en la física. Debido a que daba la impresión de resistirse a los intentos de asignarle causas propias a los efectos, la acción a distancia se ha proscrito como sinsentido ocultista. El rechazo de la acción a distancia fue el principal precepto del aristotelismo que fue tan dominante en la filosofía natural europea, y hasta hoy permanece como un prejuicio principal de la física moderna. No obstante, hubo…Read more
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6John Henry gives a dramatic account of the background to Bacon's innovations and the sometimes unconventional sources for his ideas.
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Religion |
Aesthetics |
Meta-Ethics |