Hobbes and Wallis's "battle of the books" illuminates the intimate relationship between science and crucial seventeenth-century debates over the limits of sovereign power and the existence of God.

In this first modern, critical assessment of the place of mathematics in Berkeley's philosophy and Berkeley's place in the history of mathematics, Douglas M. Jesseph provides a bold reinterpretation of Berkeley's work.

In this first modern, critical assessment of the place of mathematics in Berkeley's philosophy and Berkeley's place in the history of mathematics, Douglas M. Jesseph provides a bold reinterpretation of Berkeley's work. Jesseph challenges the prevailing view that Berkeley's mathematical writings are peripheral to his philosophy and argues that mathematics is in fact central to his thought, developing out of his critique of abstraction. Jesseph's argument situates Berkeley's ideas within the larger historical and intellectual context of the Scientific Revolution. Jesseph (...) begins with Berkeley's radical opposition to the received view of mathematics in the philosophy of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when mathematics was considered a "science of abstractions." Since this view seriously conflicted with Berkeley's critique of abstract ideas, Jesseph contends that he was forced to come up with a nonabstract philosophy of mathematics. Jesseph examines Berkeley's unique treatments of geometry and arithmetic and his famous critique of the calculus in The Analyst. By putting Berkeley's mathematical writings in the perspective of his larger philosophical project and examining their impact on eighteenth-century British mathematics, Jesseph makes a major contribution to philosophy and to the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The dissertation is a detailed analysis of Berkeley's writings on mathematics, concentrating on the link between his attack on the theory of abstract ideas and his philosophy of mathematics. Although the focus is on Berkeley's works, I also trace the important connections between Berkeley's views and those of Isaac Barrow, John Wallis, John Keill, and Isaac Newton . The basic thesis I defend is that Berkeley's philosophy of mathematics is a natural extension of his views on abstraction. The first chapter (...) is devoted to a consideration of Berkeley's treatment of abstraction, including his arguments against the doctrine of abstract ideas and his own account of how the explanatory ideas traditionally assigned to abstract ideas can be filled by a non-abstractionist account of human knowledge. In chapter two I investigate the details of Berkeley's proposed new foundations for geometry, showing how his rejection of abstract ideas led him to a critique of the traditional conception of geometry . Of particular importance in this context is Berkeley's denial of infinite divisibility and his attempts to show that a satisfactory account of geometry does not require that geometric magnitudes be infinitely divisible. Chapter three is concerned with Berkeley's treatment of arithmetic and algebra. Here I argue that Berkeley's denial of the claim that arithmetic is the science of abstract ideas of number ultimately results in his advocacy of a strongly nominalistic conception of arithmetic which has strong similarities to modern fomalism. In chapter four I discuss Berkeley's famous critique of the calculus in The Analyst and other works, concluding that his criticism of the calculus is essentially correct, although his attempted explanation of the success of infinitesimal methods is unconvincing. (shrink)

PrefaceList of AbbreviationsChapter One: The Mathematical Career of the Monster of MalmesburyChapter Two: The Reform of Mathematics and of the UniversitiesIdeological Origins of the DisputeChapter Three: De Corpore and the Mathematics of MaterialismChapter Four: Disputed FoundationsHobbes vs. Wallis on the Philosophy of MathematicsChapter Five: The "Modern Analytics" and the Nature of DemonstrationChapter Six: The Demise of Hobbesian GeometryChapter Seven: The Religion, Rhetoric, and Politics of Mr. Hobbes and Dr. WallisChapter Eight: Persistence in ErrorWhy Was Hobbes So Resolutely Wrong?Appendix: Selections from (...) Hobbes's Mathematical WritingsReferencesIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Berkeley's philosophy has been much studied and discussed over the years, and a growing number of scholars have come to the realization that scientific and mathematical writings are an essential part of his philosophical enterprise. The aim of this volume is to present Berkeley's two most important scientific texts in a form which meets contemporary standards of scholarship while rendering them accessible to the modern reader. Although editions of both are contained in the fourth volume of the Works, these lack (...) adequate introductions and do not provide com plete and corrected texts. The present edition contains a complete and critically established text of both De Motu and The Analyst, in addi tion to a new translation of De Motu. The introductions and notes are designed to provide the background necessary for a full understanding of Berkeley's account of science and mathematics. Although these two texts are very different, they are united by a shared a concern with the work of Newton and Leibniz. Berkeley's De Motu deals extensively with Newton's Principia and Leibniz's Specimen Dynamicum, while The Analyst critiques both Leibnizian and Newto nian mathematics. Berkeley is commonly thought of as a successor to Locke or Malebranche, but as these works show he is also a successor to Newton and Leibniz. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of seventeenth-century British philosophers on the notion of logic and demonstrative knowledge, particularly Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, offering an overview of traditional Aristotelianism in relation to logic and describing Bacon's approach to demonstration and logic. It also analyzes the contribution of the Cambridge Platonists and evaluates the influence of Cartesianism. The chapter concludes that theorizing about logic and demonstrative knowledge followed an arc familiar from other branches of philosophy such as metaphysics or (...) the philosophy of science. (shrink)

: This paper investigates the influence of Galileo's natural philosophy on the philosophical and methodological doctrines of Thomas Hobbes. In particular, I argue that what Hobbes took away from his encounter with Galileo was the fundamental idea that the world is a mechanical system in which everything can be understood in terms of mathematically-specifiable laws of motion. After tracing the history of Hobbes's encounters with Galilean science (through the "Welbeck group" connected with William Cavendish, earl of Newcastle and the "Mersenne (...) circle" in Paris), I argue that Hobbes's 1655 treatise De Corpore is deeply indebted to Galileo. More specifically, I show that Hobbes's mechanistic theory of mind owes a significant debt to Galileo while his treatment of the geometry of parabolic figures in chapter 16 of De Corpore was taken almost straight out of the account of accelerated motion Two New Sciences. (shrink)

This article examines Hobbes’s conception of mathematical method, situating his methodological writings in the context of disputed mathematical issues of the seventeenth century. After a brief exposition of the Hobbesian philosophy of mathematics, it investigates Hobbes’s attempts to resolve three important mathematical controversies of the seventeenth century: the debates over the status of analytic geometry, disputes over the nature of ratios, and the problem of the “angle of contact” between a curve and tangent. In the course of these investigations, Hobbes’s (...) account of mathematics and its method is contrasted with the those of Descartes, Isaac Barrow, John Wallis, and Christopher Clavius. (shrink)

This is a dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian philosophy, primarily covering philosophy in the 17th century, with a chronology and biography of Descartes's life and times and a bibliography of primary and secondary works related to Descartes and to Cartesians.

This paper analyzes Berkeley's arguments for the existence of God in the Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues, and Alciphron. Where most scholarship has interpreted Berkeley as offering three quite distinct attempted proofs of God's existence, I argue that these are all variations on the strategy of inference to the best explanation. I also consider how this reading of Berkeley connects his conception of God to his views about causation and explanation.

Early in his mathematical career Leibniz discovered some important methods and results but had to recognize that his findings had been anticipated by other mathematicians such as Pierre de Fermat, James Gregory, Isaac Newton, François Regnauld, John Wallis, etc. This paper investigates the cases of Isaac Barrow and Pietro Mengoli who, earlier than Leibniz, had been familiar with the characteristic triangle, transmutations methods, the inverse connection between determining tangents and areas of curves or the sums of the reciprocal figurate numbers, (...) and the harmonic triangle. To what extent was Leibniz aware of the results and publications of his predecessors? How did he assess their methods and results? Why did Leibniz never acknowledge any influence of these two mathematicians on his own studies? After publication of Leibniz’s manuscripts concerning the prehistory and early history of the calculus in the Academy Edition these questions can be investigated on the solid foundation of original texts. (shrink)

The A to Z of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy includes a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and cross-reference dictionary entries Descartes's writings, concepts, and findings, as well as entries on those who supported him, those who criticized him, those who corrected him, and those who together formed one of the major movements in philosophy, Cartesianism.

This is a puzzling book. On the one hand, Stoneham insists that “we cannot appreciate the contributions made by philosophers like Berkeley without coming to terms with the full breadth and detail of his thought”. On the other hand, his interpretive efforts are directed almost exclusively at the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous—a work Berkeley intended as a popular recasting of his doctrines and one that scholars generally regard as conspicuously lacking the “full breadth and detail” of his philosophy. (...) There is an evident tension between the goal of thoroughly examining Berkeley’s thought and the chosen means of focusing on the Three Dialogues. This tension arises, in large part, from the fact that Stoneham’s intended audience is not Berkeley scholars, but rather people seriously interested in philosophy and its history, yet lacking significant familiarity with Berkeley’s thought or its background in early modern philosophy. As a way to introduce advanced undergraduates or graduate students to Berkeley, the book is a reasonably successful effort, although there are some significant shortcomings. (shrink)

This paper deals with the very different attitudes that Descartes and Pascal had to the cycloid—the curve traced by the motion of a point on the periphery of a circle as the circle rolls across a right line. Descartes insisted that such a curve was merely mechanical and not truly geometric, and so was of no real mathematical interest. He nevertheless responded to enquiries from Mersenne, who posed the problems of determining its area and constructing its tangent. Pascal, in contrast, (...) saw the cycloid as a paradigm of geometric intelligibility, and he made it the focus of a series of challenge problems he posed to the mathematical world in 1658. After dealing with some of the history of the cycloid , I trace this difference in attitude to an underlying difference in the mathematical epistemologies of Descartes and Pascal. For Descartes, the truly geometric is that which can be expressed in terms of finite ratios between right lines, which in turn are expressible as closed polynomial equations. As Descartes pointed out, this means that ratios between straight and curved lines are not geometrically admissible, and curves that require them must be banished from geometry. Pascal, in contrast, thought that the scope of geometry included curves such as the cycloid, which are to be studied by employing infinitesimal methods and ratios between curved and straight lines. (shrink)

It is argued that, contrary to the standard accounts of the development of infinitesimal mathematics, the leading mathematicians of the seventeenth century were deeply concerned with the rigor of their methods. examples are taken from the work of cavalieri and leibniz, with further material drawn from guldin, barrow, and wallis.

This is a puzzling book. On the one hand, Stoneham insists that “we cannot appreciate the contributions made by philosophers like Berkeley without coming to terms with the full breadth and detail of his thought”. On the other hand, his interpretive efforts are directed almost exclusively at the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous—a work Berkeley intended as a popular recasting of his doctrines and one that scholars generally regard as conspicuously lacking the “full breadth and detail” of his philosophy. (...) There is an evident tension between the goal of thoroughly examining Berkeley’s thought and the chosen means of focusing on the Three Dialogues. This tension arises, in large part, from the fact that Stoneham’s intended audience is not Berkeley scholars, but rather people seriously interested in philosophy and its history, yet lacking significant familiarity with Berkeley’s thought or its background in early modern philosophy. As a way to introduce advanced undergraduates or graduate students to Berkeley, the book is a reasonably successful effort, although there are some significant shortcomings. (shrink)