Francis Bacon’s Natural Philosophy and the Laws of Nature

Introduction

Bacon on nature and laws

Methodological considerations

Summary of the chapters

Part I

1 Background and Contexts of Bacon’s Natural Philosophy

1.1. The sources

1.2. Natural philosophy and religion

1.3. Natural philosophy and mythology

1.4. Natural philosophy and law

1.5. Active life and contemplative life

2 The History of Nature

2.1. The stages of the history of nature

2.2. The Holy Trinity in the history of nature

2.3. Creation and God’s double emanation

2.4. The tension between discord and concord

2.5. The human species, fallen nature, and restoration

3 Necessity and Contingency in Nature and Human Life

3.1. Determinism, divine providence, and fate

3.2. Fate and causal necessity

3.3. The ends of nature: particular and universal teleology

3.4. God’s will and power and secondary causation

3.5. Fortune in human life

3.6. Chance, “epistemic chance”, and restoration

4 The Constitution of Matter: From Atoms to Latent Schematisms

4.1. The constitution of matter and the principle of things

4.2. Prime matter, prime form and secondary forms

4.3. Atomic attributes

4.4. The evolution of the stance towards atomism

4.5. Latent schematisms

4.6. Simple natures and latent schematisms

5 Motion

5.1. Motion and change

5.2. Motion and appetites

5.3. Classifications of motion and rules of predominance

5.4. Violent motion and the motion of liberty

5.5. Place, rest and local motion

5.6. The qualitative and quantitative approach of matter and motion

6 Cosmology

6.1 The material basis of the unity of nature

6.2 Four elements and greater masses

6.3 Sulphurous and mercurial families

6.4 Density and rarity

6.5 Tangible and pneumatic matter

6.6 The fold of matter and the limits of transmutation

Part II

7 The Summary Law of Nature

7.1. The “highest generality of motion”

7.2. The vertex of nature’s pyramid: unity and multiplicity

7.3. The summary law of nature in the atomist writings

7.4. The knowledge of the summary law of nature

8 The Maxims of Natural Philosophy, the Law of the Conservation of Matter and the Law of the Preservation of the Greater Whole

8.1. First philosophy

8.2. Maxims of first philosophy and legal maxims

8.3. Baconian induction, legal induction, and “anticipations”

8.4. The law of the conservation of matter

8.5. The law of the preservation of the greater whole

8.6. Further maxims of natural philosophy

9 Forms

9.1. The multiple meanings and the scope of Baconian forms

9.2. Forms as essences and the question of convertibility

9.3. “True difference”, “natura naturans”, and “source of emanation”

9.4. Forms as laws of properties

9.5. Forms as laws of science

9.6. The theological background and normativity of forms

10 Customs of Nature

10.1. Physical and metaphysical causes

10.2. The epistemic critique of final causes

10.3. Customs of nature and exceptions

10.4. The legal background and the epistemological status of the customs of nature

10.5. Artificial customs in human life

10.6. Operative science: manipulating natural customs

11 Miracles from Nature to Art

11.1. Supernatural, natural, preternatural, and artificial

11.2. Miracles of God: Are the laws of nature inviolable?

11.3. Miracles of nature

11.4. Two notions of preternatural and the exceptions to the customary paths of nature

11.5. Miracles of art

11.6. The limits and possibilities of art

12 The Nomological System and its Ontological, Epistemological and Historical Import

12.1. A comparison of the nomological types

12.2. The system

12.3. Theology, jurisprudence and Bacon’s quasi-materialism

12.4. The epistemological status of the laws, Bacon’s speculative philosophy and method

12.5. The laws of nature in the seventeenth-century context

12.6. The Baconian laws of nature in the seventeenth-century context

References

Index

Biography

Silvia Manzo is Professor of Early Modern Philosophy at the National University of La Plata (UNLP, Argentina); Director of the Research Centre for Philosophy (CIeFi, UNLP); Research Scholar of the National Research Council (CONICET, Argentina); and Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Germany). She is the author of books, journal articles, book chapters, and translations and has edited collective volumes, reference books sections, and journal issues on several topics and authors of European late-medieval, Renaissance, and early modern philosophy and science; historiography of philosophy; women philosophers; and 19th-century Argentinian and European philosophy.