Dutch Cartesianism and the Birth of Philosophy of Science: A Reappraisal of the Function of Philosophy from Regius to ‘s Gravesande 1640-1750

How did the relations between philosophy and science evolve during the 17th and the 18th century? This book analyzes this issue by considering the history of Cartesianism in Dutch universities, as well as its legacy in the 18th century. It takes into account the ways in which the disciplines of logic and metaphysics became functional to the justification and reflection on the conceptual premises and the methods of natural philosophy, changing their traditional roles as art of reasoning and as science of being. This transformation took place as a result of two factors. First, logic and metaphysics (which included rational theology) were used to grant the status of indubitable knowledge of natural philosophy. Second, the debates internal to Cartesianism, as well as the emergence of alternative philosophical world-views (such as those of Hobbes, Spinoza, the experimental science and Newtonianism) progressively deprived such disciplines of their foundational function, and they started to become forms of reflection over given scientific practices, either Cartesian, experimental, or Newtonian. Acknowledgments V Introduction 1 1 The quest for a foundation in early modern philosophy: A historical-historiographical overview 8 1.1 HPS, &HPS, HOPOS (and history of philosophy) 8 1.2 Descartes’s foundationalism: A historiographical appraisal 11 1.3 From foundation to philosophy of science: Leading problems 18 2 The ‘crisis’ of foundationalism: Regius and Descartes 23 2.1 Regius and the Utrecht Crisis (1641) 23 2.2 A medical standpoint on philosophy 26 2.3 Regius’s clash with Descartes 29 2.4 Medicine and the method of natural philosophy 34 2.5 The necessity of a foundation? 38 3 Cartesianism as the Philosophy of the School: Logic, metaphysics, and rational theology 39 3.1 Critiques and replies 39 3.1.1 The critiques of Descartes 42 3.1.2 The co-ordinated strategy of defence of Cartesianism 45 3.2 Logic as introduction to Cartesian philosophy: Clauberg’s Defensio cartesiana and Logica vetus et nova 51 3.3 Metaphysics and natural theology in the foundation of philosophy and arts 55 3.4 The ‘re-duplication’ of metaphysics and the birth of ontology 64 4 Dutch Cartesianism in the 1650s and 1660s: Philosophy, theology, and ethics 69 4.1 Cartesianism in Leiden in the 1650s: Physics without metaphysics 69 4.2 Philosophy, theology, and ethics (and the separation thesis) 72 4.3 Cartesianism and rational ethics: Geulincx between Reformed theology and Spinozism 76 4.3.1 The architectonic of philosophy 78 4.4 Geulincx’s threefold metaphysics: Autology, somatology, and theology 83 4.4.1 An Aristotelian axiom 85 4.4.2 The body 88 4.4.3 The freedom of God 92 4.5 The foundation of experience and intellectual evidence 97 4.5.1 The hierarchy of knowledge 100 4.6 Physics de-metaphysicised 104 5 Foundationalism confronting radical Cartesianism around 1670 105 5.1 The ‘misuse’ and ‘corruption’ of Cartesianism 105 5.2 De Raey’s foundation of scientific knowledge: Logic as metaphysics 112 5.2.1 The intersections of logic and metaphysics in early modern philosophy 114 5.3 The developments of De Raey’s logic 119 5.3.1 A bifurcation in the academic curriculum 123 6 Bridging scientia and experience: the last evolution of Cartesian foundationalism 126 6.1 Late Cartesianism in Leiden and Amsterdam 126 6.2 Burchard de Volder’s ‘Cartesian empiricism’ 127 6.2.1 From Descartes to De Volder: Iatrochemistry in Leiden 130 6.2.2 Experimental teaching in Leiden: De Volder and Senguerd 132 6.2.3 From Cartesianism to Newtonianism 135 6.3 The quest for principles: philosophy of science without a foundation 142 6.4 The foundation of the principles of nature: A vindication of Descartes’s metaphysics 148 6.5 Foundation and philosophy of science go separate ways: De Volder and De Raey 157 6.6 Philosophy of language as philosophy of science: De Raey’s Cogitata de interpretatione 159 6.6.1 A novelty in the philosophical reflections on language 159 6.6.2 The realm of sensibility 165 6.6.3 Intellectual ideas and modi considerandi 167 6.7 Dutch Cartesian philosophy at the turn of the century 169 7 The aftermath: The Cartesian heritage in ’s Gravesande’s foundation of Newtonian physics 171 7.1 Leiden University in the early eighteenth century 171 7.2 The introduction of Newtonianism in Leiden by ’s Gravesande 172 7.2.1 The didactic of Newton’s physics 175 7.3 Mathematics and experience in the discovery of natural laws 178 7.4 A first foundation: The survival axiom 181 7.5 Logic and metaphysics as the introduction to natural philosophy 182 7.6 The theological foundation of moral evidence 187 7.7 ’s Gravesande’s Newtonian philosophy 194 8 Conclusion: From ancilla theologiae to philosophy of science: a systematic assessment 198 Bibliography 204 Index 235