Abstract
There are some topics, in Berkeley’s philosophy, that have always puzzled his interpreters: first of all, the embarrassing concept of aether-spirit and the relations with contemporary science and with ancient hermetic wisdom as they result from his most puzzling, disordered and hermetic work.
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Notes
- 1.
David Berman defined it “Berkeley’s most puzzling and allusive work”: see his Berkeley and Irish Philosophy (London–New York: Continuum, 2005), 47.
- 2.
This is also the opinion of Timo Airaksinen: see his essay “The Path of Fire: The Meaning and Interpretation of Berkeley’s Siris”, in New Interpretations of Berkeley’s Thought, ed. Stephen H. Daniel (New York: Humanity Books, 2008), 261–281.
- 3.
See the demanding work by the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher: Magnes sive de arte magnetica libri tres (Romae: sumpt. Hermanni Scheus, ex typographia Ludovici Grignani, 1641).
- 4.
About which there is a wide bibliography, starting from the classical work by A.O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936).
- 5.
This is Timo Airaksinen’s opinion: see “The Chain and the Animal. Idealism in Berkeley’s Siris”, in Eriugena, Berkeley and the Idealist Tradition, eds. Stephen Gersh and Dermot Moran (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 224–243 (quotations are from pages 237 and 228).
- 6.
George Berkeley, Siris, in The Works, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (Edinburgh and London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1948–1957), vol. 6, § 243.
- 7.
In opposition to most (if not all) Berkeleian scholars, Berkeley did not consider Newton’s philosophy of nature as a mechanistic one. It is worth noting that many distinguished Newtonian scholars share Berkeley’s opinion: see D.C. Kubrin, “Newton and the Cyclical Cosmos: Providence and the Mechanical Philosophy”, Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967): 325–346; J.E. McGuire, “Force, Active Principles, and Newton’s Invisible Realm”, Ambix 15 (1968): 154–208; A. Thackray, Atoms and Powers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); Richard Westfall, Force in Newton’s Physics. The Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Science History Publications, 1971) and “Newton and the Hermetic Tradition”, in Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance, ed. Allen G. Debus (London: Heinemann, 1972), vol. 2, 183–198; B. J.T. Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Ernan McMullin, Newton on Matter and Activity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978); Antonio Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and Corpuscles. A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000).
- 8.
Isaac Newton, Papers & Letters on Natural Philosophy, ed. I. Bernard Cohen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 302–303.
- 9.
Gabriel Moked, “Two Central Issues in Bishop Berkeley’s ‘Corpuscularian Philosophy’ in the Siris”, History of European Ideas, 7 (1986): 633–641. See also his Particles and Ideas. Bishop Berkeley’s Corpuscularian Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
- 10.
The opposite opinion is maintained by Timo Airaksinen, in his paper on “Berkeley and Newton on Gravity in Siris”, published in this volume; he speaks about different types of mechanisms in Berkeley’s philosophy.
- 11.
Lisa Downing, “Berkeley’s Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Science”, in The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley, ed. Kenneth P. Winkler (Cambridge–New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 253.
- 12.
Downing, “Berkeley’s Natural Philosophy”, 254.
- 13.
Siris, §§ 155, 235, 249, 231.
- 14.
Siris, §§ 243, 246, 240, 231.
- 15.
Isaac Newton, Optics, query 31 (Chicago–London–Toronto: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 531, 542.
- 16.
Siris, §§ 228, 247.
- 17.
Newton, Optics, 543.
- 18.
Siris, §§ 227, 238, 243.
- 19.
Siris, §§ 226, 227, 229.
- 20.
See for example, in this volume, Daniel’s, Hight’s, Kail’s and Schwartz’s papers.
- 21.
Kenneth P. Winkler, “Berkeley and the Doctrine of Signs”, in The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley, 159–160.
- 22.
As early as 1957 and 1961, two historians of ideas such as Max Jammer and Mary B. Hesse (who were not at all Berkeleian scholars) had fully realized and acknowledged this aspect of Berkeley’s philosophy of science: see Max Jammer, Concepts of Force (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), cap. 11 and Mary B. Hesse, Forces and Fields (Edinburgh and London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1961), cap. 7.
- 23.
George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, in The Works, vol. 1, §§ 65 and 108.
- 24.
Thomas Kuhn, “Mathematical vs. Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science”, in The Essential Tension (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997; first edition 1977).
- 25.
This is Timo Airaksinen’s opinion (see “Berkeley and Newton on Gravity in Siris”, in this volume): “When the phenomena and their laws are really diverse and various so that their “mechanistic laws” are not available to us, only God can help. But, then we cannot predict.”
- 26.
Denis Forest, “George Berkeley: langage visuel, communication universelle”, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 4 (1997): 429–446.
- 27.
On the history of the concept of sign in early modern philosophy of nature, see Massimo Luigi Bianchi, Signatura rerum. Segni, magia e conoscenza da Paracelso a Leibniz (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1987).
- 28.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), IV, 12, 10.
- 29.
Locke, Essay, IV, 16, 12.
- 30.
See, for example, Robert Boyle, Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (1663), part I, in The Works, eds. Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, vol. 3, London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999.
- 31.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, IV, 12, 13, in Die philosophischen Schriften (Leibniz – Forschungsstelle der Universität Münster: Berlin, 1962), vol. 6.
- 32.
Siris, §§ 149, 152.
- 33.
Daniel P. Walker, Il concetto di spirito o anima in Henry More e Ralph Cudworth (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1986), 50.
- 34.
Siris, §§ 169, 189.
- 35.
See P.M. Rattansi, “Newton’s Alchemical Studies”, in Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance, vol. 2, 167–182.
- 36.
T. Airaksinen (The Chain, 237 ) argues that Berkeley has a sort of “omnivorous” attitude towards ancient and modern philosophies and traditions of thought, using them to forge links in his cosmic and theoretical chain: he only excludes atheistic sources, such as Epicurus and Leibniz, “the archenemy of Newton”.
- 37.
Siris, § 291.
- 38.
Siris, §§ 159, 161, 166.
- 39.
This passage, drawn from the Scholium generale added to the second edition of Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1713), is cited in Newton, Papers & Letters, 5. According to Walker ( Il concetto di spirito, 18), Renaissance astrological and medical speculations about spirits were “an important, though neglected source … of Newton’s speculations on aether”. In the same work, Walker reaffirms that “the whole tradition of material spirits could enlighten the interpretation of Newton’s ideas on space and God and, strictly connected to those, his speculations about aether” (42).
- 40.
Siris, § 169.
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Parigi, S. (2010). “Scire per causas” Versus “scire per signa”: George Berkeley and Scientific Explanation in Siris . In: Parigi, S. (eds) George Berkeley: Religion and Science in the Age of Enlightenment. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 201. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9243-4_8
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