The Concept of Causation and Scientific Explanation of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophers.
Period | 01-10-2002 to 30-09-2006 |
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Type | Predoctoral Fellowship |
Promotor(s) | Prof. Dr. Erik Weber |
Fellow | Steffen Ducheyne |
Funding agency | Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) |
This project aims at correcting and completing the standard view of the implicit and explicit beliefs on causality and explanation of natural philosophers, often anachronistically referred to as ‘scientists’ (here: from late sixteenth-century until early eighteenth-century). The chosen line of approach will be the contemporary theories on causation and scientific explanation. In order to perform this (re-)evaluation in-depth the project will focus on three important natural philosophers active in the domain of physics and/or astronomy: (1) Galileo Galilei (1664-1642), (2) Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and (3) Isaac Newton (1642-1727). With regard to the correction of the standard view, the following questions will be dealt with: questions concerning the ‘mechanistic’ and ‘proto-positivistic’ character of causality and explanation, the disappearance of causae finales (and the primacy of causae efficientes), …etc. As far as completing the standard view is concerned, innumerable questions/problems - which are obvious from the chosen perspective, but received little attention – will be tackled (e.g., the role of unification versus causal explanation).