This volume explores the relationship between physics and metaphysics in Descartes' philosophy. According to the standard account, Descartes modified the objects of metaphysics and physics and inverted the order in which these two disciplines were traditionally studied. This book challenges the standard account in which Descartes prioritizes metaphysics over physics. It does so by taking into consideration the historical reception of Descartes and the ways in which Descartes himself reacted to these receptions in his own lifetime. The book stresses the diversity of these receptions by taking into account not only Cartesianisms but also anti-Cartesianisms, and by showing how they retroactively highlighted different aspects of Descartes' works and theoretical choices. The historical aspect of the volume is unique in that it not only analyzes different constructions of Descartes that emerged in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, but also reflects on how his work was first read by philosophers across Europe. Taken together, the essays in this volume offer a fresh and up-to-date contribution to this important debate in early modern philosophy.

This volume explores the relationship between physics and metaphysics in Descartes' philosophy. According to the standard account, Descartes modified the objects of metaphysics and physics and inverted the order in which these two disciplines were traditionally studied. This book challenges the standard account in which Descartes prioritizes metaphysics over physics. It does so by taking into consideration the historical reception of Descartes and the ways in which Descartes himself reacted to these receptions in his own lifetime. The book stresses the diversity of these receptions by taking into account not only Cartesianisms but also anti-Cartesianisms, and by showing how they retroactively highlighted different aspects of Descartes' works and theoretical choices. The historical aspect of the volume is unique in that it not only analyzes different constructions of Descartes that emerged in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, but also reflects on how his work was first read by philosophers across Europe. Taken together, the essays in this volume offer a fresh and up-to-date contribution to this important debate in early modern philosophy.

Modern mechanics was forged in the seventeenth century from materials inherited from Antiquity and transformed in the period from the Middle Ages through to the sixteenth century. These materials were transmitted through a number of textual traditions and within several disciplines and practices, including ancient and medieval natural philosophy, statics, the theory and design of machines, and mathematics.This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or between textual traditions and the wider world of practice. Its purpose is to show how the accommodations sometimes made in the course of these conflicts ultimately contributed to the emergence of modern mechanics.

Modern mechanics was forged in the seventeenth century from materials inherited from Antiquity and transformed in the period from the Middle Ages through to the sixteenth century. These materials were transmitted through a number of textual traditions and within several disciplines and practices, including ancient and medieval natural philosophy, statics, the theory and design of machines, and mathematics.

This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or between textual traditions and the wider world of practice. Its purpose is to show how the accommodations sometimes made in the course of these conflicts ultimately contributed to the emergence of modern mechanics.

The first part of the volume is concerned with ancient mechanics and its transformations in the Middle Ages; the second part with the reappropriation of ancient mechanics and especially with the reception of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanica in the Renaissance; and the third and final part, with early-modern mechanics in specific social, national, and institutional contexts.

La nouveaute a aujourd'hui une valeur marchande: un nouveau produit se vend bien, de nouveaux marches s'ouvrent pour etre conquis. Les valeurs scientifiques semblent ici coincider avec les valeurs du marche, quelle que soit la raison de cette coincidence. Qui se tient tant soit peu au courant de l'actualite scientifique entend en effet parler jour apres jour de la demonstration de nouveaux theoremes, de la decouverte de nouveaux virus ou de nouvelles galaxies, de l'emergence de nouvelles technologies ou de l'apparition de nouveaux champs de recherches. C'est a tort qu'on reduirait cette valorisation de la nouveaute au seul souci de promouvoir les sciences aupres de ceux qui en assurent le financement: la nouveaute de l'hypothese, du resultat ou de la methode constitue un critere decisif dans les rapports d'evaluation des travaux scientifiques. Enfin, la nouveaute est aussi l'objet des historiens et des philosophes des sciences: les uns decrivent l'emergence historique effective des nouveautes, les autres s'interrogent sur leurs conditions de possibilite ou sur leurs consequences pour une theorie de la croyance et de la connaissance; les uns comme les autres remarquent que la production de nouveautes, et qui plus est de nouveautes cumulables, caracterise les sciences par rapport a d'autres productions humaines - c'est ce qu'on appelle usuellement le progres scientifique .

Cet hommage a Jacques Lambert, professeur d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences a l'universite de Grenoble reprend les principaux themes de ses recherches. La premiere partie, Corps de medecins, porte sur les concepts fondamentaux de la biologie et de la medecine que sont la vie et la mort, mais aussi sur leur representation litteraire ou leur theorisation philosophique, ainsi que sur certaines des institutions ou ils ont ete mis en oeuvre. De la Renaissance a l'Encyclopedie propose un parcours singulier qui, parmi les figures parfois mal connues de Jerome Cardan, Coluccio Salutati, Edme Mariotte, Charles Laboulaye ou Bernard Lamy, montre que la philosophie est depuis longtemps irriguee par les savoirs scientifiques, techniques, rhetoriques ou politiques. Pragmatisme d'hier et d'aujourd'hui confronte les premiers fondateurs du pragmatisme en un sens elargi (Vaihinger, Poincare, James, Peirce, Vailati) a leurs interlocuteurs contemporains tels Alois Riehl, Moritz Schlick ou Ernst Mach, et a leurs heritiers d'aujourd'hui, par exemple Hilary Putnam. Enfin, Sciences du XXe siecle nous rapproche finalement des sciences d'aujourd'hui, des sciences qui pensent: qu'il s'agisse du concept d'espace chez Poincare, de l'idee de classification, de la notion d'explication ou de la comparaison entre biologie et sciences des materiaux, comme des sciences qui agissent dans des contextes socio-politiques complexes, avec par exemple le debat actuel sur l'effet de serre.