Jerry Kirkpatrick's Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism: Educational Theory for a Free Market in Education presents a provocative synthesis of the educational philosophies of Maria Montessori and John Dewey with the economic philosophies of Ayn Rand and Ludwig Von Mises. At the center of Kirkpatrick's thesis is his belief that public education be subject to a free-market model. Kirkpatrick holds that students can thrive in an educational system free from all forms of coercion, something he believes can only be accomplished in (...) a free-market educational system that is not bound by government intervention. He borrows from Ayn Rand in arguing that only the individual matters and that all forms of imposed authority .. (shrink)

Einstein claimed that we do not know what it means to say that events distant from one another are simultaneous, because there is no way to determine this operationally. Reichenbach and Grunbaum claimed that determinate time relations just do not exist among events not connectible by a causal signal and that, therefore, such relations can, within certain limits, be stipulated by convention. But I argue that the independent existence of such relations is demonstrated by asking and answering a series of (...) questions based on the intelligibility, though not the existence, of faster‐than‐light signals. I further argue that (1) only by demonstrating the unintelligibility of such questions and their answers can the conventionality thesis be maintained; (2) none of the available arguments to show such unintelligibility works; and (3) the conventionality thesis is therefore false. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Based on our experience in teaching ethics, we have developed, tested, and presented in this article a program of instruction that rests on four pillars: popular feature films, a six-stage ethical decision-making process, the principles necessary to address ethical situations, and the classroom instructor. Taken separately, there is nothing new or unique in these pillars. Taken together, however, and to our knowledge, these four pillars, including the requirement that each student is expected to prepare a written abstract of the film (...) prior to the classroom discussion of that film in which the student is expected to demonstrate a practical application of ethical principles to actual and concrete moral situations, constitute a new, unique, and tested way to teach ethics to undergraduate students of management and economics. (shrink)

Our comments focus on the ACMCode of Ethics and situate the Code within ageneral ethical decision-making process tospecify the five steps which logically precedehuman action in ethical matters and determinethat action, and the individual differencetraits in these five steps which bear upon theresolution of an ethical problem and lead tomorally responsible action. Our main purpose isto present a cognitive moral processing modelwhich computing professionals can use to betterunderstand their professional rights andduties. It is clear that the Code providessubstantial guidance in (...) the areas ofintellectual property rights, unauthorizedentry into computing systems, and privacy. Inother areas, such as obscenity onbulletin-board systems, the Code is silent. Aninteractive software program which allows theuser to see the ways in which the Code isintegrated and instructive in the six-stepmoral decision-making process is accessible viathe internet. Our secondary purpose is toreformulate the Code as a set of questionswhich allow the computing professional to seepractices which diminish the human person asunethical and those which enhance the humanperson as ethical. (shrink)

Max Anderson and Peter Escher’s The MBA Oath addresses the need for a set of ethical standards to provide guidance to MBA graduates as they go about their everyday professional business. Their oath is relevant to the concerns of others in business but clearly was inspired by the special problems they encountered in the classroom as members of the Harvard MBA class of 2009. The oath and the book itself evolved from the financial meltdown of 2008 for which MBAs often (...) felt that they were being held accountable. Our review begins with the oath itself. Then we turn to the rest of the book in which we have organized our comments around its strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

This article addresses the two main obstacles — ignorance and conflict — that block the pathway to ethically proper conduct, both generally in business and specifically in marketing. It begins with a brief examination of theories of the moral good which emphasizes the Greco-Roman humanistic tradition and the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. A professional code of ethics, such as the code of the American Marketing Association, is meaningful only if human beings are regarded as making moral judgments that, objectively speaking, are (...) morally wrong, that is only when the code is considered a set of moral absolutes.Following that, the question of ignorance is dealt with utilizing the American Marketing Association code of ethics. The specific items in that code are related to the three central principles of economic justice: equivalence, contributive justice, and distributive justice. In the second section, the question of conflict is encountered in the context of four other ethical principles — double effect, culpability, good end and bad means, self-determination — that are likely to be helpful in dealing with two cases that are especially instructive because they are limiting cases: the dilemma and the hard case. The role of the hero or champion in conflicts is underscored. (shrink)

Max Anderson and Peter Escher's The MBA Oath addresses the need for a set of ethical standards to provide guidance to MBA graduates as they go about their everyday professional business. Their oath is relevant to the concerns of others in business but clearly was inspired by the special problems they encountered in the classroom as members of the Harvard MBA class of 2009. The oath and the book itself evolved from the financial meltdown of 2008 for which MBAs often (...) felt that they were being held accountable. Our review begins with the oath itself. Then we turn to the rest of the book in which we have organized our comments around its strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kiyozawa Manshi’s Two Theories of Evolution and Their Western InspirationDennis PROOIIntroductionIf one solely were to confine the scope of one’s inquiry into the defining trait of a “Tokyo School of Philosophy” to the years immediately following the founding of Tokyo University in 1877, it would be hard to escape the conclusion that philosophy there at the time was determined almost entirely by the dominant intellectual wind blowing through its (...) lecture halls, namely that of evolutionary theory. Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1916), president of the university from 1890 to 1893, was one of its staunchest advocates, doing much to foster the spread of ideas that would today be typified as “Social-Darwinian.”1 Inoue Enryō (1858–1919), undoubtedly the Meiji period’s most successful public philosopher, came to embrace many Spencerian ideas on evolution under the influence of Toyama Masakazu (1848–1900), a devout Spencerian, during his time as a student there (from 1881 to 1885).2 Ernest F. Fenollosa (1853–1908), an American philosopher who exerted great influence over the university’s young philosophical minds, was working on a synthesis of the Spencerian and Hegelian philosophical systems.3 He had been brought to Tokyo University by the Darwinian zoologist Edward S. Morse (1838–1925), who was himself instrumental in the spread of evolutionary ideas. This quick survey of Tokyo notables serves not only to establish the dominance of evolutionary theory, but also to show how in the context of late nineteenth-century Japan, “evolutionary theory” (shinkaron 進化論) is best understood as an umbrella term that could refer to a wide array of ideas—including, but certainly not limited to, Darwinian, Social-Darwinian, Spencerian, and Hegelian ones, or a mix of these—on the nature of (individual and social) change, development, and progress.Although the impact of 1859’s The Origin of Species made Darwin a figure impossible to ignore, by no means was evolutionary theory [End Page 77] equated with his theory of natural selection. For their ideas of evolution, many looked to Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), regarded by the Victorian English as the philosopher of evolution and whose system of synthetic philosophy presented positivist-leaning Meiji-era Japanese intellectuals with a definitive model of philosophical achievement. Spencer prided himself in having been the first to formulate the principle of evolution, remarking in the revised version of Social Statics (1892) that he had arrived at the general idea as early as 1850, many years before The Origin of Species had appeared in print.4 From Spencer’s point of view, Darwin had done no more than confirm a posteriori for biological organisms what was in fact an a priori law of evolution, established by Spencer in First Principles (1867) both inductively and deductively as the universal tendency of phenomena to pass from “an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity,” a process accompanied by “an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion.”5 Spencer’s nod to the materialist tradition by formulating his conception of evolution in terms of matter in motion in his own self-understanding placed him in the camp of English philosophy, which did not let itself be deluded by the wrong use of language and spurned the invocation of what from its perspective was superfluous metaphysics. The opposing camp of German philosophy—following William Hamilton (1788–1856), derided by Spencer as “absolute theorisers”—made abundant use of such metaphysics to defend a teleological understanding of evolution—the kind of understanding Darwin (with his emphasis on the non-teleological character of natural selection) and Spencer (with his focus on matter in motion) attempted to render obsolete.6Under the influence of Fenollosa, many students of philosophy at Tokyo University became attracted to the alternative German teleological model of evolution, the history of which via the German Romantics goes back to Leibniz’s attempt to reintroduce into physics the idea of final causes after these in that domain had been eliminated by Descartes.7 Descartes, to begin with, was the one to revolutionize natural philosophy by reducing the physical world to one of matter in motion ruled by efficient causation, imagining, much like Spencer two centuries later, that such a minimalist view of... (shrink)

In this book, published in 1686, the scientist Robert Boyle attacked prevailing notions of the natural world which depicted 'Nature' as a wise, benevolent and purposeful being. Boyle, one of the leading mechanical philosophers of his day, believed that the world was best understood as a vast, impersonal machine, fashioned by an infinite, personal God. In this cogent treatise, he drew on his scientific findings, his knowledge of contemporary medicine and his deep reflection on theological and philosophical issues, (...) arguing that it was inappropriate both theologically and scientifically to speak of Nature as if it had a mind of its own: instead, the only true efficient causes of things were the properties and powers given to matter by God. As such, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature represents one of the subtlest statements concerning the philosophical issues raised by the mechanical philosophy to emerge from the period of the scientific revolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment by Gordon GrahamDeborah BoyleGRAHAM, Gordon. Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. xvii + 254 pp. Cloth, $110.00Histories of Scottish philosophy typically focus on the school of "common sense" from the eighteenth century, beginning with Francis Hutcheson and ending with Dugald Stewart. As Gordon Graham notes in the preface to this volume, nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy is "an area of the (...) history of philosophy that has generally gone almost entirely unexplored." His collection of eleven standalone essays (only one of which has been previously published) argues that something recognizable as "Scottish philosophy" continued into the nineteenth century—although Graham thinks it ended, then, too—and suggests conceptions of Scottish philosophy that go beyond the old trope of "common sense."Unusually for a work in the history of philosophy, the first chapter is autobiographical. Graham recalls that as an undergraduate studying moral philosophy at St. Andrews in 1968, the only Scottish philosopher he was assigned to read was Hume, whose work was taught in the ahistorical manner that dominated philosophy at that time, and that upon his appointment to the Regius Chair of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen in 1995 he found little appreciation for the university's most famous former professor, Thomas Reid. Thus began Graham's establishment of the Reid Project at the University of Aberdeen (later the Centre for the Study of Scottish Philosophy and now the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy), the founding of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and his editorship of several book series on Scottish philosophy. The story of Graham's scholarship over the years is really the story of the recovery of the history of Scottish philosophy after its near-total neglect in the twentieth century.Graham seems wary of the contextualist turn that historians of philosophy have embraced since around the 1980s, which he likens to "antiquarianism," but at the same time he notes that our current philosophical interests are "not an infallible or even an especially reliable guide to what is intellectually significant" from the past. His solution is to look for intellectual "trajectories" in the history of philosophy—although not with the Whiggish view that these culminate in the present—and to locate particular figures within those trajectories. Thus he is especially interested in identifying the various themes—not just "common sense"— [End Page 551] that can unite the work of different philosophers born and working in Scotland in order to provide a more expansive account of Scottish philosophy.Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment provides a close look at the lives and work of major figures of this period, with a chapter devoted to each: William Hamilton (chapter 2), James Frederick Ferrier (chapter 3), Alexander Bain (chapter 4), Thomas Carlyle (chapter 5), Alexander Campbell Fraser (chapter 9), and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (chapter 10). Although Graham argues that Pringle-Pattison's work marks the culmination and end of distinctively Scottish philosophy, he devotes the final chapter to the work of twentieth-century philosopher John McMurray on the grounds that McMurray's conception of human agency is rooted in Scottish debates from the previous two centuries over realism and idealism (chapter 11). Along the way, the book helpfully introduces other thinkers currently much less well known, such as Edward Caird, Henry Calderwood, Henry Jones, James Hutchison Stirling, John Tulloch, and John Veitch.Instead of thinking of Scottish philosophy as simply equivalent to common sense philosophy, Graham offers various alternative conceptions of Scottish philosophy, characterized as various "trajectories" that can be seen as originating in the eighteenth century and developing through the nineteenth: as a concern with realism and idealism that developed in the nineteenth century into responses (whether critical or favorable) to Hegelianism (chapter 6); as a prolonged conversation about the relationship between science and philosophy and the possibility of progress in the scientific study of the mind (chapter 7); and as the continuation of eighteenth-century post-Humean Scottish philosophers' aim of defending theism, even in the face of Darwin's findings (chapters 8 and 9). Presenting Scottish philosophy through these different lenses is highly illuminating and makes a persuasive case for the need for further... (shrink)

A recent dispute between Richard Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson concerning fundamental concepts in sociobiology is examined. It is argued that sociobiology has not fared well since the 1970s, and that its survival as a ‘scientific’ perspective has been increasingly tenuous. This is, at least in part, because it has failed to move forward in the ways its developers anticipated, but also because it has not seen the developments in natural history, genomics and social science it was relying upon. (...) It is argued that sociobiology has become a purely utilitarian perspective, a way of looking at things, reliant increasingly on studies of the behaviour of social insects for its scientific credentials. The dispute between Dawkins and Wilson is then reconsidered in this light, and it is argued that – regardless of which position prevails – sociobiology’s parlous state as a means of explaining action is now difficult to disguise. (shrink)

El artículo aborda los conceptos de multiculturalidad, interculturalidad y educación intercultural, como perspectivas teóricas que permiten explicar la dinámica intercultural de la acción educativa y como desafío epistemológico de los conocimientos indígenas en la escolarización. Para ello se realiza un análisis de los elementos teóricos que sustentan estos conceptos; se problematiza la dificultad epistemológica de la educación intercultural, considerando el contexto en que se lleva a cabo, y en consecuencia, se plantea que la dinámica de estos conceptos permite la posibilidad (...) de considerar la interculturalidad tanto para la formación como para la problematización de situaciones interculturales que están en proceso de investigación. This article addresses the concepts of multiculturalism, interculturalism and intercultural education as theoretical perspectives to explain the intercultural dynamic of educational activities, and as epistemological challenges to indigenous knowledge in the school context. To examine these concepts we analyze the theoretical foundations which underlie them. We then formulate the epistemological problem of intercultural education, considering the context in which it takes place. Consequently, we argue that it is the dynamic of these concepts which makes it possible to consider interculturalism both in education and in the formulation of the questions posed by the intercultural situations under investigation. (shrink)

Michael Hunter has done more than any single person since Thomas Birch to make the study of Robert Boyle convenient and enjoyable, and here, ably assisted by Edward B. Davis, he has put us all further in his debt with a compact and readable edition of the philosophically important Free Enquiry into the Notion of Nature.

Scientists, both modern and contemporary, commonly try to discern patterns in nature. They also frequently use arguments by analogy to construct an understanding of the natural mechanisms responsible for producing such patterns. For Robert Boyle, the famous clock at Strasbourg provided a perfect paradigm for understanding the connection between these two scientific activities. Unfortunately, it also posed a serious threat to his realistic pretensions. All sorts of internal mechanisms could produce precisely the same movements across the face of a (...) clock. Given God's immense creative capacities, Boyle realized that standard epistemological constraints could never ensure, not even to the least degree of probability, that scientific theories about the unobservable mechanisms of nature were descriptively accurate. Like most moderns, he fortified his epistemology theologically in order to retain his realistic stance. John Locke, however, took counsel from Ecclesiastes to repudiate Boyle's realism, while Samuel Clarke mobilized biblical images to dismiss the clockwork paradigm altogether.A contemporary review of this modern controversy reveals that there is still much to learn from the clock at Strasbourg. Among other things, the realism/antirealism issue is of central importance to understanding today's science, Nancey Murphy's protests notwithstanding. Moreover, the kind of realistic stance that is essential, not only to the truth but to the very intelligibility of certain types of scientific explanation, demands more than the critical realism of Ian Barbour. To be taken seriously, the models used in such contexts must be taken literally. (shrink)

This study throws new light on the composition of Boyle's Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv'd Notion of Nature ; it also draws more general conclusions about Boyle's methods as an author and his links with his context. Its basis is a careful study of the extant manuscript drafts for the work, and their relationship with the published editions. Section 2 describes Boyle's characteristic method of composition from the late 1650s onwards, involving the dictation of discrete sections (...) of text to amanuenses; it also assesses the effect this had on the structure and presentation of Boyle's writings. Section 3 considers the published text section by section and indicates which parts were written when; it also surveys unpublished draft material relating to the work. Section 4 places the work in context, considering the intellectual threats that Boyle sought to confront in it, both when he initially composed it in the 1660s and when he rewrote it c. 1680. It thus anchors him more precisely than hitherto in the intellectual debates of his day. (shrink)

I demonstrate that the two major ethical traditions agree that there are given desires which provide extra-rational practical reasons. Empiricist theories ground ethics in such desires, but the extra-rationality of this foundation appears to lead to stultifying subjectivism. Rationalist theories justify the appeal to an independent Kantian Reason as necessary to gain control over such desires. But the status of these desires as providing motivating reasons guarantees that such independent Reason can never be more than one among competing sources of (...) practical rational motivation. ;I then argue that the generalization and extension of the epistemological argument against the given provides compelling evidence that there can be no such given desires. This argument demonstrates that episodes which can provide reasons cannot be extra-rational, indeed must be constituted through rational endorsement. This critical argument is applied to the work of Dennis Stampe and Thomas Hobbes , and extended from desires to preferences . ;In order to provide rational warrant, a desire must itself be rationally endorsed in a context of other endorsed episodes within which its own warrant is secured. There are no given desires, no extra-rational practical reasons in which the crude empiricist can ground practical reasoning. But there is also no need to postulate Reason independent of desire to gain rational control over such desires. I close by suggesting that this critical argument provides a framework for the construction of a middle ground between the two traditions which incorporates their central insights while avoiding their chronic failings. (shrink)

This chapter examines the changes in the concept of substance and essence in British philosophy during the seventeenth century. It analyzes the roles played by substance and essence in different versions of scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy studied and taught during this period, and considers the criticism of Thomas Hobbes, Robert Boyle, and John Locke on these issues. The chapter suggests that Hobbes, Boyle, and Locke engaged with the context of scholastic logic and metaphysics in their discussions of substance (...) and their attempts to reject and replace theories of substantial form. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 277-278 [Access article in PDF] John Hedley Brooke, Margaret J. Osler, and Jitse M. van der Meer, editors. Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Journals Division, 2001. Pp. xiii + 376. Cloth, $39.00. Paper, $25.00. Some twenty years ago, when I submitted a dissertation proposal to explore connections between theologies of creation and views of scientific (...) knowledge in the seventeenth century, my doctoral committee was not initially enthusiastic—my idea might make a good dissertation in religion, but was it really history of science? I doubt I would have a similar experience today. Not only has the "warfare" thesis of science and religion been laid permanently to rest, historians have begun seriously to question whether it makes sense even to treat "religion" and "science" in an essentialist manner as separate ways of thinking that do not ordinarily interact. Many detailed case studies demonstrating a variety of fascinating, often important connections between science and religion have appeared from leading scholars in the past two decades. This trend continues in the latest volume of Osiris, which contains sixteen essays documenting various ways in which religious beliefs have influenced the actual content and presentation of science.The volume opens with two companion essays laying out the terrain. First, Brooke engages the new methodological and conceptual problems that confront historians following the demise of the "warfare" thesis. Then Stephen Wykstra offers criteria for sorting out the various roles for metaphysical and religious beliefs (which he distinguishes) in shaping scientific knowledge. The case studies begin with E. Jamil Ragep's essay on medieval Islamic astronomy, arguing that religion sometimes had a constructive role—a rather novel claim for Islamic science, he points out. Noah J. Efron and Menachem Fisch show how early modern Jewish exegetical practices influenced David b. Solomon Gans's interpretations of astronomical texts, and quite possibly his interpretation of nature also. A Christian astronomer is next, as Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein detail how Johannes Kepler's theology contributed directly to the discovery of scientific laws. Maurice A. Finnocchiaro then reviews various accounts of the Galileo affair, finding far more conflict in the subsequent historiography of the events than in the trial itself.Moving from astronomy to natural philosophy, Margaret G. Cook's essay on Robert Boyle examines the web of connections between theology, the mechanical philosophy, and [End Page 277] "the Aristotelian philosophy that he sought to replace." She demonstrates that Boyle used the classical art/nature distinction "to interpret the biblical account of the Creation and to argue that chemical techniques offered experimental confirmation that the world, created by art, worked by the same mechanical principles as artificial objects, not by the inherent agency of Aristotelian nature" (136). Margaret J. Osler also writes about Boyle. Contrary to the traditional view that final causes were expunged from science by the mechanical philosophy—a view that originated in the "positivism and scientific optimism" of the postwar period (168)—she proves that final causality remained central to the thought of Boyle and Pierre Gassendi. The essay by Stephen D. Snobelen presents substantial evidence that the famous General Scholium, appended to the second edition of Isaac Newton's Principia, was a carefully worded declaration of Newton's heterodox theology. "A Trinitarian," Snobelen concludes, "could not have written the General Scholium" (186). He also shows the degree to which Newton's theology shaped his overall natural philosophy, decisively debunking the late Richard S. Westfall's view that such influences could not be found.The final seven essays are mainly devoted to nineteenth-century science. Michael J. Crowe documents several ways in which Christian beliefs about divine goodness and the Incarnation affected astronomy. Martin Fichman shows how Alfred Russel Wallace's theism—not merely a vague spiritualism, as traditional accounts claim—"shaped the cognitive content of his mature evolutionary synthesis, which included a theoretical reconceptualization of the scope of natural selection" (227). In a revisionist account of Charles Darwin's philosophy of "nature," Phillip R. Sloan challenges the received view that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Boyle on Occasionalism: An Unexamined SourcePeter Anstey*1. IntroductionThe question of Robert Boyle’s attitude to occasionalism 1 is central to our understanding of his corpuscular hypothesis, yet there has been little or no consensus in the secondary literature regarding Boyle’s attitude. 2 The doctrine of occasionalism is that matter is causally inefficacious and that God is the only causal agent in nature. It is a doctrine that (...) was particularly attractive to those Cartesian philosophers in the latter part of the seventeenth century who sought to find an active role for God in nature, for it both avoided the remoteness of the deist’s god and provided a ready explanation of the miraculous. Since Boyle was a mechanical philosopher, a Christian, and strongly influenced by Descartes, it seems likely that he too would have found occasionalism attractive; but there is no sustained discussion of occasionalism in his published works. It is therefore of singular importance that three folios in volume 10 of the Boyle Papers comprise a paper containing an explicit philosophical treatment of this doctrine. 3 It appears that Boyle considered these folios to be of sufficient importance to have them translated into Latin, perhaps to be circulated [End Page 57] among some of his non-English speaking acquaintances. Furthermore, this discussion of occasionalism is not simply of philosophical interest for its bearing on our interpretation of Boyle’s corpuscular philosophy, but it also has a degree of intrinsic philosophical interest in its own right. Moreover, the folios are of historical interest as a further important piece of evidence for the reception and dissemination of occasionalist ideas in Britain in the latter half of the seventeenth century. It is fitting therefore that they should be published.What follows is the reproduction of folios 38–40 from volume 10 of the Boyle Papers. This is prefaced by a short editorial introduction and is followed by a philosophical commentary, a short history of Boyle’s reception of oc-casionalist ideas and a review of recent interpretations of Boyle’s natural philosophy on the issue of occasionalism. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of Boyle’s philosophical method and method of work. This section attempts to resolve the apparent tension between the guarded defense of occasionalism offered in the folios published here and the incompatible doctrines espoused in Boyle’s published works.2. Editorial Introduction to Boyle Papers volume 10, folios 38–40In folios 38–40 of volume 10 of the Boyle Papers there is a sustained discussion of the thesis that “God himself is the only proper and immediate cause” among things corporeal. In Michael Hunter’s guide to the microfilm edition the folios are identified as a “[f]ragment of discourse discussing Cartesian views” and the reader is there referred to folios 42–46. 4 However, Edward B. Davis has correctly identified these latter folios as draft material for Boyle’s Final Causes. 5 Hunter has confirmed that the hand that wrote these reflections on occasionalism is that of A, an amanuensis who was in Boyle’s employment from c. 1680 and that some of the corrections are in the same hand. This is strong evidence that the passage was composed in the late 1670s or the 1680s. 6 The passage is written on a bifoliate followed by a single leaf linked to the former by a catchword. The hand is legible, and the pages contain only a small number of corrections. The passage itself consists of ninety-one lines. It is endorsed “A Fragment” in pencil, bears no title, and most likely was never completed. At one point Boyle tells us of the grounds of occasionalism that “there will be occasion to enlarge on them when I come to vindicate them,” something which he does not complete in the lines that follow. Rather the discussion comes to an abrupt halt after five and a half lines into the third folio. [End Page 58]Hunter has also identified a Latin translation of these folios in Boyle Papers, volume XXIX, folios 77–82v. The translation is in hand L, who has not been identified but who worked for Boyle in the 1680s. 7 It is... (shrink)

This article recounts the history of the composition, publication and dissemination of Edward Pococke’s translation into Arabic of Grotius, De Veritate, the motivation for making it alleged both by Grotius and by Pococke, and the changes in the text which were introduced by Pococke. An Appendix provides, for the two chapters which are most different from Grotius’s original, the Arabic text, a literal translation, Grotius’s Latin, and details of the sources of Grotius and Pococke for their accusations against the (...) Muslims in those chapters. (shrink)