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Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy in Descartes and Newton

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This paper compares Newton’s and Descartes’s conceptions of the complex relationship between physics and metaphysics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Andrew Janiak

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  1. Andrew Janiak
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Correspondence to Andrew Janiak.

Additional information

For many helpful discussions of the issues raised in this piece, I would like to thank: Nico Bertoloni Meli, Hasok Chang, Mary Domski, Michael Friedman, Dan Garber, Gary Hatfield, Christia Mercer, David Marshall Miller, Eric Schliesser. Special thanks are due to Maarten Van Dyck and especially Karin Verelst for editing this issue and for their hospitality during a very memorable stay in Brussels and Ghent in 2008. All translations in this paper are my own. Whenever possible, I have tried to keep my translations close to well-known published versions of the relevant texts, especially the now standard translation of the Princpia by Cohen and Whitman (Newton 1999).

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Janiak, A. Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy in Descartes and Newton. Found Sci 18, 403–417 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-011-9277-0

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