A history of natural philosophy : from the ancient world to the nineteenth century / Edward Grant.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grant, Edward, 1926-2020

Contributor:

Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Physics--History.

Physics.

Science--History.

Science.

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 361 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Natural philosophy encompassed all natural phenomena of the physical world. It sought to discover the physical causes of all natural effects and was little concerned with mathematics. By contrast, the exact mathematical sciences - such as astronomy, optics, and mechanics - were narrowly confined to various computations that did not involve physical causes. Natural philosophy and the exact sciences functioned independently of each other. Although this began slowly to change in the late Middle Ages, a much more thoroughgoing union of natural philosophy and mathematics occurred in the seventeenth century and thereby made the Scientific Revolution possible. The title of Isaac Newton's great work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, perfectly reflects the new relationship. Natural philosophy became the "Great Mother of the Sciences," which by the nineteenth century had nourished the manifold chemical, physical, and biological sciences to maturity, thus enabling them to leave the "Great Mother" and emerge as the multiplicity of independent sciences we know today.

Contents:

1 Ancient Egypt to Plato 1

The Preliterate Beginnings 1

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia 2

Early Greek Natural Philosophy and Medicine 6

Plato 21

2 Aristotle (384-322 BC) 27

Life 27

Works: Aristotle's Writings and Their Preservation 28

Aristotle's Achievements 33

Aristotle's Cosmos and Natural Philosophy 37

The Scope of Aristotle's Natural Philosophy 42

3 Late Antiquity 52

Neoplatonism and Its Approach to Aristotle 52

4 Islam and the Eastward Shift of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy 61

The Fate of Natural Philosophy in Islam 68

5 Natural Philosophy before the Latin Translations 95

Roman Authors 95

The Latin Encyclopedists: European Learning to the Ninth Century 97

The Twelfth Century and Its Immediate Antecedents 105

Hostile Reception of the New Theology 115

Natural Philosophy in the Twelfth Century 116

6 Translations in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 130

The World of the Translators 130

Translations from Arabic and Greek in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 132

How Trustworthy Are Aristotle's Translated Texts? 138

Pseudo-Aristotle: Works Falsely Attributed to Aristotle 140

7 Natural Philosophy after the Translations: Its Role and Place in the Late Middle Ages 143

The Medieval University 143

The Impact of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy in the Early Thirteenth Century to 1240 146

University Lectures on Natural Philosophy 152

The Classification of the Sciences and the Subject of Natural Philosophy 155

Anonymous Fourteenth-Century Treatise on Natural Philosophy 165

The Occult Sciences and Natural Philosophy 170

8 The Form and Content of Late Medieval Natural Philosophy 179

John Buridan: On the Possibility of Other Worlds 183

The Substantive Nature of Natural Philosophy in the Late Middle Ages 190

Thought Experiments and the Role of the Imagination 200

Beyond Aristotle 211

Was Aristotelian Natural Philosophy Science? 234

9 The Relations between Natural Philosophy and Theology 239

The Disciplinary Relations between Natural Philosophy and Theology 247

Did God and Theology Play an Integral Role in Medieval Natural Philosophy? 248

How a Few Significant Natural Philosophers Viewed the Relations between Natural Philosophy and Theology 251

The Relationship as Reflected in the Questions and Commentaries on the Works of Aristotle 257

Did Natural Philosophy Influence Medieval Theology? 262

10 The Transformation of Medieval Natural Philosophy from the Early Modern Period to the End of the Nineteenth Century 274

The Fate of Medieval Natural Philosophy during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 274

The New Natural Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century 278

The Relations between Natural Philosophy and Science in the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries 303

The Revolution in Natural Philosophy from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century 307

The Continuity of History and the Problem of Names and Terminology 319.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-345) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0521869315

9780521869317

0521689570

9780521689571

OCLC:

67383930

Online:

Publisher description