Abstract
It was not so long ago that it was regarded as importantly obvious that a major feature of the seventeenth century was a secularization of knowledge. Butterfield, for example, had written of the second half of the seventeenth century as “a colossal secularization of thought in every possible realm of ideas at the same time”1. This secular movement was all of a piece with the battle between the Ancients and the Moderns and was much associated with the rise of modern science, especially as manifested in the thought of such giants as Galileo, and Newton, and the empiricist philosophy of Locke.
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Notes
Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science (London, 1951) p.166.
De Augmentis Scientiarum, III, 1, The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, edited by John M. Robinson from the texts of Ellis and Speckling (London, 1905 ) pp. 453–4.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, edited by Stillman Drake (New York, 1957), p.182.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,edited by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1975), p.10. All references to the Essay will be to this edition and normally cited by Book, Chapter and Section number, and by page.
See his Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding (Cambridge, 1970) especially Chapter 1.
Essay, IV, XXI, 1–4, pp. 720–21.
ECHU, II, XI, 23, p.520. Locke attended Willis’s Oxford lectures around 1663 and 1664. Cf. Kenneth Dewhurst: Willis’s Oxford Lectures (Sanford Publications, Oxford, 1980) which contains a transcript of Locke’s MS.
In this essay, somewhat anachronistically, I shall sometimes talk of the sciences or the natural sciences, often using the terms as synonymous with `natural philosophy’. I am well aware that they were not so used in the early modern period, any more than the term ‘philosophy’ always means the same today as it did then (though it sometimes does). For something on these changes see: Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams: “De-centring the `Big Picture’: The Origins of Modern Science and the modern origins of science”, which also has some remarks about Butterfield’s work, and see the discussion in Robert Crocker’s Introduction,above.
See, for example, the following papers by Popkin: “The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought: Scepticism, Science and Millenarianism”, “Newton’s Biblical Theology and his Theological Physics” and “The Religious Background of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy”, all now collected in his The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Leiden, 1992). See also the papers in Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 1640–1700,edited by Richard Kroll, Richard Ashcraft, and Perez Zagorin (Cambridge, 1992) and Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought 1650–1800,edited by Richard Popkin (Leiden, 1988).
Rorty claims that it is not until Kant that the modern science-philosophy distinction takes hold. If this is so then there was no such subject as epistemology in the seventeenth century. I have considerable sympathy with some of Rorty’s claim, but there can be no doubt that characteristically epistemic worries emerge in Descartes, Locke and other canonical philosophers of the seventeenth century, and in my understanding of these matters owe a great deal to the recovery of ancient sceptical arguments at the very same time as atomistic theories once again enter the arena of natural philosophy. See his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1979 ), Chapter 3.
Many in England were of course influenced by Descartes but the number of those who accepted his sharp dualism appears very small. The Franciscan, Antoine Le Grand was a Cartesian and long resident in Oxfordshire, but whether he counts as an English Cartesian is doubtful as he was a native of Douay. Admirers of Descartes, such as Walter Charleton, often found difficulty in his sharp dualism.
Cf. Immortality of the Soul, passim, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr Henry More (London, 1712) hereafter CSPW.
CSPW, The Immortality of the Soul, Book 3, ch. 12, p. 212.
The secondary literature on the Cambridge Platonists is now enormous. For a bibliography see: G.A.J. Rogers: “Die Cambridger Platoniker” in Grunddriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, Die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts 3 England,edited by Jean-Pierre (Basel: Schobinger, 1988), pp.285–290. For a relevant recent account of Henry More see Arlene Miller Guinsburg “Henry More, Thomas Vaughan and the Late Renaissance Magical Tradition” Ambix,27 (1980), pp. 36–58.
The True Intellectual System of the Universe,to which are added the Notes of Dr J.L. Mosheim (3 vols, London, 1845), Vol. I, `Preface to the Reader’, p.xxxiii.
B.J.T. Dobbs: The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy ( Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975 ) p. 100.
Quoted in Dobbs, ibid. from Barrow: In comitiis 1652. Cartesiana hypothesis de materia et motu haud satisfacit praecipuis naturae phaenomenis,Barrow, Theological Works,(Cambridge, 1859), Vol. 9, pp.89–90. Translation from Percy Osmond: Isaac Barrow. His Life and Times (London, 1944), p.31.
On Robert Boyle’s intellectual development and his place in seventeenth-century thought see the rather contrasting accounts of M.A. Hunter: Robert Boyle (1627–1691). Scrupulosity and Science (London: The Boydell Press, 2000) especially Chapter 2 and Antonio Clericuzio: Elements, Principles and Corpuscles. A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), especially Chapters 3 and 4.
For a recent treatment see Margaret Osier’s “The intellectual sources of Robert Boyle’s philosophy of nature: Gassendi’s voluntarism and Boyle’s physico-theological project” in Philosophy, Science and Religion in England,edited by Richard Kroll, Richard Ashcraft and Perez Zagorin (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), pp. 178–198.
Origin of Forms and Qualities According to the Corpuscular Philosophy. The Theoretical Part,in The Works of the Hon. Robert Boyle,edited by Thomas Birch (6 vols, London, 1672), Vol. 3.
For the dispute between More and Boyle see Robert A. Greene: “Henry More and Robert Boyle on the Spirit of Nature”, JHI, 32 (1962), pp. 451–474.
Works,Vol. 3, p. 15.
Works,Vol. 4, p.7.
Of the High Veneration Man’s Intellect Owes to God, Works, Vol. 5, p. 131.
Works,Vol. 4, p.410.
In Advice in Judging of Things said to Transcend Reason he argues that normally there is a sharp difference between essence and existence. However, in the case of God (an infinitely perfect being) actual existence being a perfection, must belong to him.. Works,Vol. 4, p.461.
Royal Society Boyle Papers, Vol. XXXV in M.A. Stewart (ed), Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle ( Manchester: Manchester UP, 1979 ) p. 119.
For a brief overview see my “Descartes and the Mind of Locke. The Cartesian Impact on Locke’s Philosophical Development”, Descartes: Il Metodo E I Saggi,a cura di Giulia Belgioioso, et. al. (2 vols, Roma, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 689–697.
IV, XI, 3, p.631.
Two Treatises of Government, edited by Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1960), Second Treatise, Section 26, p. 304.
IV, X, 6, p.621.
II, XXVIII, 5, p.351.
II, XXVIII, 8, p.352.
I here follow the William Popple translation of Epistola de Tolerantia,most recently available in A Letter Concerning Toleration in Focus,edited by John Horton and Susan Mendus (London, 1991), p. 47.
On this see John Dunn, “The Claim to Freedom of Conscience: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Worship?”, in From Persecution to Toleration. The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England,edited by Ole Peter Grell, et al. (Oxford, 1991), pp. 171–193 and G.A.J. Rogers, “Locke and the Latitude-men: Ignorance as a ground of Toleration”, in Philosophy, Science and Religion in England,pp. 230–252.
Essay, IV, XII, 11, p. 646.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education, edited by John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton, ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989 ), pp. 247–8.
Ibid.,p.248.
Ibid.,p.246.
Mr Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter, The Works of John Locke (10 vols, London, 1823 ), vol. 4, pp. 467–8.
The Correspondence of Isaac Newton,edited by H. W. Turnbull et al. (Cambridge, 19591977) 7 Vols., Vol. 3, p. 233.
Opticks, Dover edition, based on the 4th, 1730 edition (New York, 1952), p.405.
Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the World,translated by Andrew Motte and revised by Florian Cajori (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962) p.398.
The text is published in Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1974), Appendix A. The passage quoted is on p. 120.
Opticks, ed. cit., p.404.
Principia, ed. cit., p.400.
Manuel, Appendix A, p.121.
Ibid.
Cf. Principles of Philosophy,Part II, Principles 37–39.
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Rogers, G.A.J. (2001). Nature, Man and God in the English Enlightenment. In: Crocker, R. (eds) Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe. Archives Internationales d’histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 180. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9777-7_8
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