This book offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative account of the natural philosophy and of the conception of the laws of nature by Francis Bacon, one of the leading English reformers of natural science and an inspirer of the Scientific Revolution. The first part of the book focuses on the concepts central to his natural philosophy which are keys to understanding his account of the laws of nature, including his account of the creation of the universe and the several great stages of nature, of necessity and chance in natural events, the theory of matter and motion, and his cosmology. The second part examines four types of entities that explain the regularity of nature and shows how they form a system. This part also addresses a full interpretation of his controversial concept of forms, the relation of Bacon’s natural philosophy to his jurisprudence, provides a new insight into Bacon’s approach of induction and discusses the relation between his speculative philosophy and his method. It is argued that Bacon has a unique view of the laws of nature which can be seen as a transition from ancient, medieval and Renaissance approaches to early modern views.
Francis Bacon’s Natural Philosophy and the Laws of Nature will be of special interest to Francis Bacon scholars, historians of Renaissance and early modern philosophy and science, historians of law, historians of theology, Renaissance scholars and early modern English studies scholars.
This book offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative account of the natural philosophy and of the conception of the laws of nature by Francis Bacon, one of the leading English reformers of natural science and an inspirer of the Scientific Revolution.
Introduction
Bacon on nature and laws
Methodological considerations
Summary of the chapters
Part I
Chapter 1
Background and Contexts of Bacons Natural Philosophy
1.1. The sources
1.2. Natural philosophy and religion
1.3. Natural philosophy and mythology
1.4. Natural philosophy and law
1.5. Active life and contemplative life
Chapter 2
The History of Nature
2.1. The stages of the history of nature
2.2. The Holy Trinity in the history of nature
2.3. Creation and Gods double emanation
2.4. The tension between discord and concord
2.5. The human species, fallen nature, and restoration
Chapter 3
Necessity and Contingency in Nature and Human Life
3.1. Determinism, divine providence, and fate
3.2. Fate and causal necessity
3.3. The ends of nature: particular and universal teleology
3.4. Gods will and power and secondary causation
3.5. Fortune in human life
3.6. Chance, epistemic chance, and restoration
Chapter 4
The Constitution of Matter: From Atoms to Latent Schematisms
4.1. The constitution of matter and the principle of things
4.2. Prime matter, prime form and secondary forms
4.3. Atomic attributes
4.4. The evolution of the stance towards atomism
4.5. Latent schematisms
4.6. Simple natures and latent schematisms
Chapter 5
Motion
5.1. Motion and change
5.2. Motion and appetites
5.3. Classifications of motion and rules of predominance
5.4. Violent motion and the motion of liberty
5.5. Place, rest and local motion
5.6. The qualitative and quantitative approach of matter and motion
Chapter 6
Cosmology
Part II
Chapter 7
The Summary Law of Nature
7.1. The highest generality of motion
7.2. The vertex of natures pyramid: unity and multiplicity
7.3. The summary law of nature in the atomist writings
7.4. The knowledge of the summary law of nature
Chapter 8
The Maxims of Natural Philosophy, the Law of the Conservation of Matter and
the Law of the Preservation of the Greater Whole
8.1. First philosophy
8.2. Maxims of first philosophy and legal maxims
8.3. Baconian induction, legal induction, and anticipations
8.4. The law of the conservation of matter
8.5. The law of the preservation of the greater whole
8.6. Further maxims of natural philosophy
Chapter 9
Forms
9.1. The multiple meanings and the scope of Baconian forms
9.2. Forms as essences and the question of convertibility
9.3. True difference, natura naturans, and source of emanation
9.4. Forms as laws of properties
9.5. Forms as laws of science
9.6. The theological background and normativity of forms
Chapter 10
Customs of Nature
10.1. Physical and metaphysical causes
10.2. The epistemic critique of final causes
10.3. Customs of nature and exceptions
10.4. The legal background and the epistemological status of the customs of
nature
10.5. Artificial customs in human life
10.6. Operative science: manipulating natural customs
Chapter 11
Miracles from Nature to Art
11.1. Supernatural, natural, preternatural, and artificial
11.2. Miracles of God: Are the laws of nature inviolable?
11.3. Miracles of nature
11.4. Two notions of preternatural and the exceptions to the customary paths
of nature
11.5. Miracles of art
11.6. The limits and possibilities of art
Chapter 12
The Nomological System and its Ontological, Epistemological and Historical
Import
12.1. A comparison of the nomological types
12.2. The system
12.3. Theology, jurisprudence and Bacons quasi-materialism
12.4. The epistemological status of the laws, Bacons speculative philosophy
and method
12.5. The laws of nature in the seventeenth-century context
12.6. The Baconian laws of nature in the seventeenth-century context
Reference list
Silvia Manzo is Professor of Early Modern Philosophy at the National University of La Plata (UNLP, Argentina); Director of the Research Centre for Philosophy (CIeFi, UNLP); Research Scholar of the National Research Council (CONICET, Argentina); and Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Germany). She is the author of books, journal articles, book chapters, and translations and has edited collective volumes, reference books sections, and journal issues on several topics and authors of European late-medieval, Renaissance, and early modern philosophy and science; historiography of philosophy; women philosophers; and 19th-century Argentinian and European philosophy.
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