Newton and Empiricism

by Biener, Zvi; Schliesser, Eric

• ISBN13: 9780199337095
• ISBN10: 0199337098
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-06-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Zvi Biener is an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati. His research concerns the unity of science in early modernity, particularly early-modern views on reduction, the interdependence of branches of knowledge, and the metaphysical underpinnings of the mathematical sciences.

Eric Schliesser is BOF Research Professor at Ghent University. He has published widely in early modern philosophy and the sciences, especially Spinoza, Newton, Hume, Adam Smith, and Sophie de Grouchy as well as philosophy of economics.

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. The Roots of Newton's Experimental Method
1. Stephen Gaukroger (Aberdeen & Sydney): "Empiricism as a Development of Experimental Natural Philosophy"
2. Dana Jalobeanu (Bucharest): "Constructing Natural Historical Facts: Baconian Methodology in Newton's First Paper on Light and Colors"
3. Philippe Hamou (Université de Lille III): "Colorific Properties, Visual Sensation and Method in Newton's Opticks"

II. Newton and "Empiricist" Philosophers
4.Lisa Downing (Ohio State): "Locke's Metaphysics and Newtonian Metaphysics"
5. Geoff Gorham & Ed Slowik. "Locke and Newton on Space and Time and their Sensible Measures"
6. Yoram Hazony (Shalem Institute): "Hume's Attack on Newton: A Reappraisal"
7. Tamas Demeter (Max Planck Institute): "Enlarging the Bounds of Moral Philosophy: Newton's Method and Hume's Science of Man"

III. Newtonian Method in 18th and 18th-Century Science
8. Tammy Nyden (Grinnel College): "Living Force at Leiden: De Volder, 's Gravesande and the Reception of Newtonianism"
9. Charles Wolfe (Sydney): "On the role of Newtonian analogies in eighteenth-century life science: Vitalism and provisionally inexplicable explicative devices"
10. George Smith (Tufts): "Closing the Loop: Testing Newtonian Gravity, Then and Now"