The Idea of Principles in Early Modern Thought by Anstey Peter R.;

Author:Anstey, Peter R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

Experimental Philosophy and Corpuscularism

The movement of early modern experimental philosophy emerged in England around 1660 amongst fellows of the early Royal Society such as Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. It quickly spread to Italy, where it found a favourable reception among the naturalists and physicians who regarded themselves as Galileans.3 It even influenced those Jesuits, such as Daniello Bartoli and Filippo Buonanni, who were willing to integrate new insights in an eclectic version of Aristotelian-Scholastic scientia and to engage with novatores on the specific details of their discoveries (e.g., Bartoli 1677: 5–18), rather than rejecting their outlook a priori for its metaphysical and theological implications (Torrini 1979b: 20–27). Among other works, Geminiano Montanari’s Physico-Mathematical Thoughts (1667) and Francesco Redi’s Experiments on the Generation of Insects (1996 [1668]) endorse central tenets of experimental philosophy.

Experimental philosophers shared a common rhetoric, based on the praise of experiments and the criticism of hypotheses and speculations. They had common heroes, like Bacon, and common foes, especially Aristotelian and, later, Cartesian natural philosophers. But their most important common trait lies in their views on how we can acquire and expand our knowledge of nature. Experimental philosophers held that, before firmly committing oneself to any substantive claims or theories of the natural world, one should gather extensive empirical information by means of experiments and observations. They assigned the same primary role to experiments and observations (Anstey 2014: 105–106): identifying matters of fact which are the basis for developing and confirming theories of the natural world. Experiences (i.e. experiments and observations) reported by others must be critically evaluated, and if possible, their experiments must be replicated. Only once this process of fact gathering and checking is nearing completion will we be entitled to commit firmly to substantive claims or theories (Hooke 1705: 18) and only insofar as they are warranted by experiments and observations (Defence against Linus, 1662, Boyle 1999–2000, 3: 12; Sprat 1667: 107).

Seventeenth-century experimental philosophers often claimed that empirical information should be organized in experimental natural histories (Oldroyd 1987: 151–152): large structured collections of experiments and observations on any kinds of items (biological kinds, minerals, diseases, states of matter, counties, and arts). These collections should serve as the preliminary step to the construction of “a Solid and Useful Philosophy.”4 Natural philosophical theories should be derived from empirical information through a process called induction (Glanvill 1668: 87; Hooke 1705: 331; Montanari 1980: 540) or deduction (Newton 1999 [1726]: 943). Yet, seventeenth-century experimental philosophers did not take up Bacon’s theory of induction,5 nor did they develop detailed accounts of how theories can be derived from experiments and observations.6

These methodological and epistemological views of seventeenth-century experimental philosophers entail neither the endorsement nor the rejection of corpuscularism. I understand corpuscularism as a view on explanatory natural philosophical principles, namely the view that physical phenomena should be explained in terms of the shape, size, and spatial arrangement of the particles that make up physical bodies, along with the motion of such particles according to the laws of nature.7 Yet, several recent

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