The Concept of Causation and Scientific Explanation of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophers.

Period 01-10-2002 to 30-09-2006
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).