Peter Anstey

This volume contains the complete correspondence of two of the leading analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, David Armstrong and David Lewis. Comprising some 345 letters, including letters to and from third parties, this correspondence is at once a deep philosophical resource shedding new light on the philosophical development of two of the great late twentieth-century philosophers, and a record of the development of a philosophical friendship. The letters are valuable, not only for the light they shed on the background to many of Armstrong's and Lewis' major publications, but also for what they show us about the practice of philosophy. The correspondence is a window into both the philosophical content of two leading thinkers' minds and an exemplar of how philosophy of the highest level can be done.

This paper attempts to advance our understanding of the emergence of the modern notion of physical Laws of Nature by situating the earliest known discussions of laws of nature, those of Descartes, in the context of the theory of principles and the broader neo-Aristotelian theory of knowledge acquisition. It is claimed that together these theories are an important, though hitherto over­looked, seam within the conceptual resources from which Descartes’ distinctive and novel notion of Laws of Nature was developed.

This paper addresses the question of the nature and extent of the impact that the new experimental natural philosophy that emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century had on the discipline of logic or the art of thinking. It does so through the examination of the writings of three logicians whose works appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century, namely, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, Isaac Watts, and William Duncan. Through an examination of references to experimental philosophy in their logic texts, with a special focus on their sections on method, the paper argues that experimental philosophy did, indeed, have an impact; an impact that increases in importance over time. Experimental philosophy was not simply used for illustrative purposes but was integrated into their accounts of induction and the methods of analysis and synthesis. The logics under consideration show the legacy of developments within late scholastic logic, the importance of the theory of principles, and the influence of leading philosophers such as Descartes, Pascal, and Locke.

This chapter examines Stephen Gaukroger’s claim that a new form of natural philosophical explanation, phenomenal explanation, emerged in the experimental practice of Boyle and Newton and was first articulated by Locke. Phenomenal explanation was autonomous in so far as it was independent of underlying foundational theory and, as such, it was a form of horizontal rather than vertical explanation. After setting out the thesis, the chapter proceeds to illustrate the thesis through Boyle’s air-pump experiments and his appeals to the spring of the air, to show how it is placed in Gaukroger’s broader historiography of early modern philosophy and science, and to show just where the thesis appears in his writings. It concludes with an assessment of Gaukroger’s thesis in comparison with an alternative reading by Alan Chalmers that posits that the salient explanatory notion is that of intermediate cause rather than phenomenal explanation.

Today, John Locke is recognized as one of the most important and formative philosophical influences on the modern world. His imprint is still felt in political and legal thought, in educational theory, moral theory and in the theory of knowledge. Locke’s key works, _Two Treatises of Government_, and the monumental _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_, provoked lively debate when they were first published in 1690 and remain standard texts in undergraduate philosophy courses throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. It is not surprising therefore that Locke scholarship is a burgeoning force in the history of philosophy and that his ideas and arguments are repeatedly alluded to in current philosophical debate. Indeed, since the publication of the first series of _Locke: Critical Assessments_ in 1991, Locke research has proceeded apace, and it is now fitting that a second _Critical Assessments_ series be published. Of particular importance in recent work on Locke has been research into the colonial contexts of his political writings; a more nuanced and historically grounded approach to Locke’s writings on natural philosophy; and a theological turn in Locke scholarship that has centred on the content and reception of his _The Reasonableness of Christianity_. Each of these new trends is represented in this second series, as are recent contributions to long-standing debates concerning Lockean interpretation and influence.

This article assesses the role of the laws of the French logician and educational reformer Petrus Ramus in the writings of Francis Bacon. The laws of Ramus derive from Aristotle’s grounds for necessary propositions. Necessary propositions, according to Aristotle, Ramus, and Bacon, are required for the premises of scientific syllogisms. It is argued that in Bacon’s Advancement of Learning and De augmentis scientiarum the only role for these laws is in the transmission of knowledge that has already been acquired. However, in the early Valerius Terminus Bacon also considered them to be relevant to the interpretation of nature. Interestingly, this, in turn, sheds light on the two precepts for the discovery of forms in Aphorism 4 of Book Two of the Novum organum that appear to derive from Valerius Terminus. All of this bears importantly on Bacon’s views on the problem of gaining epistemic access to the inner natures or forms of things.

This paper analyses the place of natural history within Bacon's divisions of the sciences in The Advancement of Learning and the later De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum. It is shown that at various points in Bacon's divisions, natural history converges or overlaps with natural philosophy, and that, for Bacon, natural history and natural philosophy are not discrete disciplines. Furthermore, it is argued that Bacon's distinction between operative and speculative natural philosophy and the place of natural history within this distinction, are discontinuous with the later distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy that emerged in the methodology of the Fellows of the early Royal Society.