Baxfield, Christopher (Author)
This article argues that the chemical and physiological experiments undertaken by the natural philosopher Stephen Hales (1677-1761) constituted a reformulation of providential matter theory. Hales was responding to a continuing debate about the position of chaos in the natural world between Newtonians like Samuel Clarke, who posited chaos as oppositional to immediate providential direction, and those such as John Ray and Bernard Nieuwentyt, who argued that nature was a chaos of operations, organised by divinely endowed but innate principles. Vegetable Staticks (1727) represents an attempted solution, arguing that a chaos of operations could support life only if it was concurrent with God's direction. Subsequently criticised by the Irish theologian Peter Browne for indulging frivolity, Hales responded in Haemastatics (1733) by auditing how spirituous liquor precipitated a bodily disintegration from the chaos of operations into a destructive chaos. Hales' subsequent campaign against spirits should be read as an extension of his experimental philosophy as a moral tool.
...More
Article
Baxfield, C. R. C.;
(2013)
“To Mend the Scheme of Providence”: Benjamin Franklin's Electrical Heterodoxy
(/isis/citation/CBB001252898/)
Article
Schliesser, Eric;
(2013)
On Reading Newton as an Epicurean: Kant, Spinozism and the Changes to the Principia
(/isis/citation/CBB001320265/)
Book
Borghero, Carlo;
(2011)
Les cartésiens face à Newton: Philosophie, science et religion dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB001211957/)
Book
Martin, Craig;
(2014)
Subverting Aristotle: Religion, History, and Philosophy in Early Modern Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001422607/)
Article
Michael Granado;
(2016)
The Cosmological Argument: A Newtonian Challenge to Hume
(/isis/citation/CBB217909079/)
Article
Rienk Vermij;
(2018)
Translating, Adapting, Mutilating: Or, How to Make an Enlightenment Classic
(/isis/citation/CBB784334762/)
Thesis
Vermij, Rienk H.;
(9-9-1991)
Secularisering en natuurwetenschap in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw: Bernard Nieuwentijt
(/isis/citation/CBB155878646/)
Article
Hayashi, Shin-ichiro;
(2009)
Was Clarke Newton's Agent? Reexamination of Samuel Clarke in the Controversy with Leibniz
(/isis/citation/CBB000931599/)
Article
Young, Brian;
(2004)
Newtonianism and the Enthusiasm of Enlightenment
(/isis/citation/CBB000471160/)
Article
Berry, R. J.;
(2011)
John Ray, Physico-Theology and Afterwards
(/isis/citation/CBB001230623/)
Article
John Henry;
(2020)
Primary and Secondary Causation in Samuel Clarke’s and Isaac Newton’s Theories of Gravity
(/isis/citation/CBB866910656/)
Article
McMahon, Susan;
(2000)
John Ray (1627-1705) and the Act of Uniformity 1662
(/isis/citation/CBB000111483/)
Article
Hiro Hirai;
(2021)
Daniel Sennert, Chymistry, and Theological Debates
(/isis/citation/CBB126568830/)
Chapter
Luís Miguel Carolino;
(2021)
Jesuítas, ciência e disciplina no Portugal da contra‑reforma
(/isis/citation/CBB844350664/)
Article
Lyke de Vries;
(2022)
Protecting Academia and Religion: Andreas Libavius’s Criticism of a General Reformation
(/isis/citation/CBB629444913/)
Book
Joly, Bernard;
(2011)
Descartes et la chimie
(/isis/citation/CBB001320157/)
Article
Massimi, Michela;
(2011)
Kant's Dynamical Theory of Matter in 1755, and Its Debt to Speculative Newtonian Experimentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001230565/)
Essay Review
Costa, Erica da;
(2013)
The Mystery of Matter
(/isis/citation/CBB001566621/)
Article
Florio, Emilia;
(2007)
Il corpo finito e la sua infinita divisibilità in un manoscritto (1764) di Padre Simpliciano da Napoli
(/isis/citation/CBB001023639/)
Book
Goldenbaum, Ursula;
Jesseph, Douglas;
(2008)
Infinitesimal Differences: Controversies between Leibniz and His Contemporaries
(/isis/citation/CBB000950297/)
Be the first to comment!