Handling "Occult Qualities" in the Scientific Revolution
Disciplines and New Approaches to Natural Philosophy, from John Dee to Isaac Newton
Series: - Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy and Science, Volume: 37
The Scientific Revolution saw the redefinition of many scholastic notions about the nature of the world and its constituent parts, from planets to particles. Wang’s book introduces a convincing and wide-ranging narrative of the changing place of ‘occult qualities’ in the context of emergent new scientific methods and early modern disciplinary realignments. Through in-depth analysis of the diverse treatments of this notion, whereby it becomes now a hollow phrase, now a touchstone for the superiority of new physics, Wang shows how the transformation of this notion is key to understanding almost every facet of the new physics of the age.
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Xiaona Wang, Ph. D. (2019, University of Edinburgh), is now a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, working on a three-year project on early modern gravitational theories.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Re-disciplining “Occult Qualities”: Mechanics and the Mixed Mathematical Sciences
1.1 Being “Skilled in ‘Catoptrics’ ”
1.2 Testing a Body of “Astronomical Hypotheses”
1.3 Dismissing “Idle Imaginings”
1.4 Creating the “Unheard-of Paradox”
2 Manifesting “Occult Causes”: Empirical Investigations and Experimental Philosophy
2.1 The Physician’s Pathway
2.2 The Baconian Method
2.3 Occult Causes; Manifest Effects
2.4 The “Physico-Mathematicall-Experimentall” Programme
3 Employing the Occult Powers of the Lodestone and Orbital Motions
3.1 Gilbert’s Magnetism
3.2 Magnetism and Gravity
3.3 Approaches to Orbital Motions
4 Exploring Hidden Qualities of Matter: “vis activa”
4.1 Matter Emits (Magnetical) Effluvia
4.2 Matter Vibrates and So Does Aether
4.3 Matter Attracts and Repels
5 Reintroducing “Occult Qualities” into Natural Philosophy? Newton’s Approaches to Physics
5.1 Early Immersion in the Mixed Mathematical Programme
5.2 The Inimitable Newtonian Methodology: Dynamics
5.3 Approaches to Physics and Active Principles
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Re-disciplining “Occult Qualities”: Mechanics and the Mixed Mathematical Sciences
1.1 Being “Skilled in ‘Catoptrics’ ”
1.2 Testing a Body of “Astronomical Hypotheses”
1.3 Dismissing “Idle Imaginings”
1.4 Creating the “Unheard-of Paradox”
2 Manifesting “Occult Causes”: Empirical Investigations and Experimental Philosophy
2.1 The Physician’s Pathway
2.2 The Baconian Method
2.3 Occult Causes; Manifest Effects
2.4 The “Physico-Mathematicall-Experimentall” Programme
3 Employing the Occult Powers of the Lodestone and Orbital Motions
3.1 Gilbert’s Magnetism
3.2 Magnetism and Gravity
3.3 Approaches to Orbital Motions
4 Exploring Hidden Qualities of Matter: “vis activa”
4.1 Matter Emits (Magnetical) Effluvia
4.2 Matter Vibrates and So Does Aether
4.3 Matter Attracts and Repels
5 Reintroducing “Occult Qualities” into Natural Philosophy? Newton’s Approaches to Physics
5.1 Early Immersion in the Mixed Mathematical Programme
5.2 The Inimitable Newtonian Methodology: Dynamics
5.3 Approaches to Physics and Active Principles
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
The book will appeal to a broad range of readers interested in intellectual history, the history of early modern science and philosophy, the Scientific Revolution, and Newton in particular.