The Crisis of Causality: Voetius and Descartes on God, Nature, and Change

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BRILL, 1995 - 353 Seiten
"The Crisis of Causality" deals with the reaction of the Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) to the "New Philosophy" of Rene Descartes (1596-1650). Voetius not only criticised the Cartesian idea of a mechanical Universe; he also foresaw that shifting conceptions of natural causality would make it impossible for theologians to explain the relationship between God and Creation in philosophical terms. This threatened the status of theology as a scientific discipline. Apart from a detailed analysis of the Scholastic and Cartesian notions of causality, the book offers new perspectives on related subjects, such as seventeenth-century university training and the Cartesian method of science. It will be of great importance to any student of seventeenth-century intellectual history, philosophy, theology and history of science.

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Inhalt

Voetius Essay on Natures and Substantial Forms
9
Species and Forms
37
Finalist Physics
71
Perception and Causality
107
From Ends to Impulse
133
The Composite Character of Substantial Unity
167
Ultimate Causes in Mechanical Physics
199
The Cartesian World
241
Causes Conservation and Concurrence
261
Conclusions
303
BIBLIOGRAPHY
321
INDEX
339
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Autoren-Profil (1995)

J.A. van Ruler, Ph.D. (1995) in Philosophy, University of Groningen, has published various studies on the history of seventeenth-century philosophy and theology and on the intellectual history of the Dutch Republic.

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