IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB645048085

Kenelm Digby on Quantity as Divisibility (2020)

Vivarium: Journal for Mediaeval Philosophy and the Intellectual Life of the Middle Ages
Volume: 58
Issue: 3
Pages: 191-218

DOI: 10.1163/15685349-12341384

URI: https://brill.com/view/journals/viv/58/3/article-p191_4.xml

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Natural philosophy Metaphysics Soul (philosophy) Mind and body 17th century Digby, Kenelm

Abstract Kenelm Digby’s Two Treatises, of the Nature of Bodies and of the Nature of Mans Soule (1644) defends quite an idiosyncratic approach to mind-body dualism. In his use of the divisibility argument to prove that the human soul cannot be a material substance, Digby takes an uncompromising stand for merely potential material parts. In his Treatise of Bodies the present article focuses on the mode of construction of the definition of quantity as divisibility and on its links to two distinct fundamental arguments against the actual material parts doctrine. The first, positive, argument consists of a semantic reason drawn from Digby’s general doctrine of meaning, whereas the second, negative, argument, addresses the traditional question of the composition of the continuum. The latter, the author contends, does not build on the medieval controversy itself, but on Digby’s opposition to Galileo’s claim of indivisibilism in his Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences (1638).

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB645048085/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Blank, Andreas; (2013)
Fortunio Liceti on Mind, Light, and Immaterial Extension (/isis/citation/CBB001320399/)

Book Cassandra Gorman; (2021)
The Atom in Seventeenth-Century Poetry (/isis/citation/CBB486681154/)

Chapter Smith, Justin E. H.; (2008)
Spirit as Intermediary in Post-Cartesian Natural Philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB000952947/)

Book Luigi Di Franco; (2023)
La sintesi natura-spirito di Tommaso Campailla tra '600 e '700 (/isis/citation/CBB646816022/)

Article Gaudemard, Lynda; (2012)
Les “marques d'envie”: métaphysique et embryologie chez Descartes (/isis/citation/CBB001250261/)

Article Nicholas Aubin; (2021)
Natural Teleology versus Material Determinism and Chance: Al-'Āmirī against Empedocles and Galen on Nature and Soul (/isis/citation/CBB177931396/)

Chapter Janacek, Bruce; (2000)
Catholic natural philosophy: Alchemy and the revivification of Sir Kenelm Digby (/isis/citation/CBB000111562/)

Thesis Mason, Caleb Edward; (2001)
Conciliatory eclecticism and the philosophy of Kenelm Digby (/isis/citation/CBB001562622/)

Article Naama Cohen-Hanegbi; (2016)
A Moving Soul: Emotions in Late Medieval Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB186537346/)

Book Boer, Sander W. De; (2013)
The Science of the Soul: The Commentary Tradition on Aristotle's De anima, c. 1260--c.1360 (/isis/citation/CBB001201334/)

Book Collins, Siobhán; (2013)
Bodies, Politics and Transformations: John Donne's Metempsychosis (/isis/citation/CBB001201705/)

Book Paolo Pecere; (2023)
La natura della mente. Da Cartesio alle scienze cognitive (/isis/citation/CBB751480142/)

Article Delphine Antoine-Mahut; Mathias Winter; Samuel Lézé; (2021)
Comment éveiller l’âme de Victor ? (/isis/citation/CBB104404434/)

Book Arnaud Pelletier; (2015)
Leibniz and the Aspects of Reality (/isis/citation/CBB865637105/)

Book Fabrizio Bigotti; (2020)
Physiology of the Soul: Mind, Body and Matter in the Galenic Tradition of Late Renaissance, 1550-1630 (/isis/citation/CBB286303811/)

Article Habinek, Lianne; (2013)
Untying the “Subtle Knot”: Anatomical Metaphor and the Case of the rete mirabile (/isis/citation/CBB001253049/)

Chapter Roland, Jeanne; (2011)
“The Organism, or the Machine of Nature”: Some Remarks on the Status of Organism in the Substantial Composition (/isis/citation/CBB001500217/)

Article Jacqueline Broad; (2018)
Conway and Charleton on the Intimate Presence of Souls in Bodies (/isis/citation/CBB484625868/)

Article Arikha, Noga; (2006)
Form and Function in the Early Enlightenment (/isis/citation/CBB000640520/)

Article Leen Spruit; (2017)
Sebastiano Bartoli on Life and the Soul (/isis/citation/CBB245646731/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}