tailieunhanh - Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms

René Descartes gives few philosophical arguments to directly support his rejection of forms in favor of mechanisms . Moreover, the scattered reasons he offers in his corpus are cryptic and hard to unpack. Hence I will draw on Descartes’ intellectual context to reconstruct his reasoning and shed light on his historic elimination of Scholastic Aristotelian substantial forms from the physical world. Given that Descartes continues to call the soul a substantial form , my focus will be on his rejection of material substantial forms employed in Aristotelian physics (for lack of a better term I will refer to all substantial forms that exist only in matter, ., all except. | DESCARTES on Forms and Mechanisms HELEN HATTAB Cambridge g 9780521518925 This page intentionally left blank DESCARTES ON FORMS AND MECHANISMS The modern view of causation can be traced back to the mechan istic science of Descartes whose rejection of Aristotelian physics with its concept of substantial forms in favor of mechanical explan ation was a turning point in the history of philosophy. However the reasoning which led Descartes and other early moderns in this direction is not well understood. For the first time this book traces Descartes groundbreaking theory of scientific explanation back to the mathematical demonstrations of Aristotelian mechanics and interprets these advances in light of the available arguments for and against substantial forms. It also examines how Descartes new theory led him to develop a metaphysical foundation for his science that could avoid skeptical objections. It will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in the philosophy and science of the early modern period. HELEN HATTAB is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy University of .