The Disponent Power in Gilbert’s De Magnete : From Attraction to Alignment

This paper investigates the relation between Gabriel Plattes’ (c. 1600–1644) cosmology and theory of matter, on the one hand, and his method of experimentation, on the other. In my view Plattes based his cosmology and theory of matter on specific “principles of nature” expressed as alchemical qualitative relations between bodies, and these principles formed the theoretical framework for his experimental method and technologies. I also claim that Plattes’ method of experimentation has heuristic purposes, acting as a tool to instantiate and illustrate these natural principles. By quantifiable manipulations of matter (expressed in terms of proportions and numbers), Plattes made use of experimentation to provide technologies whose immediate purpose was to ameliorate or improve the material world.

Section: Experimentation and Technologies Of Ameliorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimenting with Matter in the Works of Gabriel Plattes

Matei

2020

Animism, Aristotelianism, and the Legacy of William Gilbert’sDe Magnete

Kochan

2021

William Gilbert’s 1600 book, De magnete, greatly influenced early modern natural philosophy. The book describes an impressive array of physical experiments, but it also advances a metaphysical view at odds with the soon to emerge mechanical philosophy. That view was animism. I distinguish two kinds of animism – Aristotelian and Platonic – and argue that Gilbert was an Aristotelian animist. Taking Robert Boyle as an example, I then show that early modern arguments against animism were often effective only against Platonic animism. In fact, unacknowledged traces of Aristotelian animism can be found in Boyle’s mechanical account of nature. This was Gilbert’s legacy.

Playing with the Ancients: The Cosmology of Gilles Personne de Roberval

Babeș

2022

This contribution explores Gilles Personne de Roberval’s 1644 Aristarchi Samii de mundi systemate, partibus, & motibus eiusdem, libellus. I focus on the complex circumstances of publication, the intellectual context of the polemics of Copernicanism within the scientific community, as well as the natural philosophy of the treatise. Roberval’s strategy of publication provides a very sophisticated example of authorship in early modern natural philosophy. The strategy lies at the conflux of certain specific motivations. I contextualize these motivations by accounting for the delicate debates around the motion of the Earth in mid-seventeenth century Europe, the institutional communities of the Collège Royal and Mersenne’s circle, and the disciplinary bounds of Roberval’s professional authority. Weighing in all the elements, I argue that Roberval’s publication is an interesting intellectual game, playing with the notion of ancient authority and humanistic recovery. By this somewhat libertine attitude, Roberval takes a stance in a complicated debate around heliocentrism and the status of hypothetical cosmology. Roberval’s position is supported by his natural philosophical speculations, which I situate in the contemporary debates of the community. Roberval borrows from many philosophers, but he aims at achieving a highly systematic speculative cosmology. One of the functions of this system is to confirm Copernicanism, while maintaining a very pessimistic attitude on the prospects of precise astronomical knowledge and, among others, prognostication issues.