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17Boghossian, Bellarmine, and Galileo: Adjudication and epistemic relativismDialectica 75 (1): 85-118. 2021.Many prominent arguments for epistemic relativism take their departure from the observation that a certain kind of epistemic symmetry is present in particular empirical cases. In this paper, we seek to attain further clarity about the kind of symmetry at issue, and the sort of relativism to which such symmetry can reasonably be taken to give rise. The need for such an investigation is made apparent, we believe, by the fact that prominent anti-relativist arguments such as that advanced by Boghoss…Read more
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16Jochen Büttner, Swinging and Rolling: Unveiling Galileo's Unorthodox Path from a Challenging Problem to a New Science, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2019 (review)Centaurus 64 (4): 925-940. 2022.
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452Applying Mathematics to NatureIn David Marshall Miller & Dana Jalobeanu (eds.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge University Press. pp. 254-273. 2021.
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216Causality and the reduction to art of Simon Stevin's mechanicsIn Karel Davids, Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, Ida Stamhuis & Rienk Vermij (eds.), Rethinking Stevin, Stevin rethinking : constructions of a Dutch polymath, Nuncius. pp. 155-181. 2020.
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13Philosophical aspects of symbolic reasoning in early modern mathematicsCollege Publications. 2010.The novel use of symbolism in early modern mathematics poses both philosophical and historical questions. How can we trace its development and transmission through manuscript sources? Is it intrinsically related to the emergence of symbolic algebra? How does symbolism relate to the use of diagrams? What are the consequences of symbolic reasoning on our understanding of nature? Can a symbolic language enable new forms of reasoning? Does a universal symbolic language exist which enable us to expre…Read more
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473Mechanical philosophy: science of mechanicsEncyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. 2020.
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751Renaissance concept of impetusEncyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. 2019.The concept of impetus denoted the transmission of a power from the mover to the object moved. Many authors resorted to this concept to explain why a projectile keeps on moving when no longer in contact with its initial mover. But its application went further, as impetus was also appealed to in attempts to explain the acceleration of falling bodies or the motion of the heavens. It was widely applied in Renaissance natural philosophy, but it also raised a number of ontological questions concernin…Read more
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205HorologyEncyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. 2020.Horology refers to the measurement of time, as well as the art of building instruments with which to study and measure time. There were two important developments in the early modern period: the dramatic improvement of the quality of mechanical clocks due to highly skilled craftsmen, and the introduction of the pendulum as time-keeper in the escapement mechanism. The latter innovation not only allowed a further jump in precision, it also had important conceptual implications.
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162Varieties of wonder: John Wilkins' Mathematical Magic and the perpetuity of inventionHistoria Mathematica 41 (4): 463-489. 2014.Akin to the mathematical recreations, John Wilkins' Mathematicall Magick (1648) elaborates the pleasant, useful and wondrous part of practical mathematics, dealing in particular with its material culture of machines and instruments. We contextualize the Mathematicall Magick by studying its institutional setting and its place within changing conceptions of art, nature, religion and mathematics. We devote special attention to the way Wilkins inscribes mechanical innovations within a discourse of w…Read more
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376Renaissance Idea of Natural LawEncylopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. 2018.The introduction of laws of nature is often seen as one of the hallmarks of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. The new sciences are thought to have introduced the revolutionary idea that explanations of natural phenomena have to be grounded in exceptionless regularities of universal scope, i. e. laws of nature. The use of legal terminology to talk about natural regularities has a longer history, though. This article traces these earlier uses.
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355Idealization and Galileo’s Proto-Inertial PrinciplePhilosophy of Science 85 (5): 919-929. 2018.Galileo proposed what has been called a proto-inertial principle, according to which a body un horizontal motion will conserve its motion. This statement is only true in counterfactual circumstances where no impediments are present. This paper analyzes how Galileo could have been justified in ascribing definite properties to this idealized motion. This analysis is then used to better understand the relation of Galileo’s proto-inertial principle to the classical inertial principle.
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319De onoplosbare spanning in expertise-gebaseerd beleidFilosofie-Tijdschrift 31 (6): 18-21. 2021.
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17Motion and Proportion in Simon Stevin’s MechanicsIn Marcus P. Adams, Zvi Biener, Uljana Feest & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (eds.), Eppur Si Muove: Doing History and Philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Peter Machamer, Springer. 2017.This paper offers a reassesment of Simon Stevin’s mechanics, by focusing on how Stevin tries to anchor his mathematical demonstrations in the behavior of material instruments. It is shown how his views on the relation between spiegheling and daet are crucial to correctly understand his famous proof of the law of the inclined plane and his experimental test of the Aristotelian law of free fall. The distance separating spiegheling and daet is reproduced in that between instruments at rest and inst…Read more
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549Hoe Galileo Galilei de valwet ontdekte, en het verschil dat dit maaktAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 113 (1): 81-105. 2021.How Galileo Galilei discovered the law of fall, and the difference that this makes Galileo’s law of fall is one of the crucial building blocks of classical mechanics. The question how this law was discovered has often been a topic of debate. This article offers a reconstruction of the developments within Galileo’s research that led to the discovery of the law. This reconstruction is offered to make a philosophical point regarding the epistemic status of experimental results: Galileo’s experiment…Read more
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126“Whatever Is Neither Everywhere Nor Anywhere Does Not Exist”: The Concepts of Space and Time in Newton and LeibnizFoundations of Science 18 (3): 399-402. 2013.
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20Kuhn's structures of scientific revolutions at fifty. Reflections on a science classic (review)Centaurus 60 (1-2): 126-128. 2018.
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42The Practical Value of Spurious Correlations: Selective versus Manipulative PolicyAnalysis 68 (4). 2008.In the past 25 years, many philosophers have endorsed the view that the practical value of causal knowledge lies in the fact that manipulation of causes is a good way to bring about a desired change in the effect. This view is intuitively very plausible. For instance, we can predict a storm on the basis of a barometer reading, but we cannot avoid the storm by manipulating the state of the barometer (barometer status and storm are effects of a common cause, viz. atmospheric conditions). In Sectio…Read more
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32Unification and Explanation: A Comment on Halonen and Hintikka, and SchurzSynthese 131 (1). 2002.In this article we criticize two recent articles that examine the relation between explanation and unification. Halonen and Hintikka (1999), on the one hand, claim that no unification is explanation. Schurz (1999), on the other hand, claims that all explanation is unification. We give counterexamples to both claims. We propose a pluralistic approach to the problem: explanation sometimes consists in unification, but in other cases different kinds of explanation (e.g., causal explanation) are requ…Read more
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68Being in or Getting at the Real: Kochan on Rouse, Heidegger and Minimal RealismPerspectives on Science 21 (4): 453-462. 2013.The debate between realism and antirealism has been central in the general philosophy of science of the last decades. But ever since the heydays of the debate in the 1980s, there have been authors who have tried to argue for the overcoming or dissolution of the debate itself, by proposing a position that is neither realist nor antirealist. Prominent among these is Joseph Rouse (Rouse 1987). Yet, Jeff Kochan has recently argued that Rouse, despite his efforts to transcend the realism/antirealism …Read more
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808The Paradox of Conceptual Novelty and Galileo’s Use of ExperimentsPhilosophy of Science 72 (5): 864-875. 2005.Starting with a discussion of what I call Koyré’s paradox of conceptual novelty, I introduce the ideas of Damerow et al. on the establishment of classical mechanics in Galileo’s work. I then argue that although the view of Damerow et al. on the nature of Galileo’s conceptual innovation is convincing, it misses an essential element: Galileo’s use of the experiments described in the first day of the Two New Sciences. I describe these experiments and analyze their function. Central to my analysis i…Read more