Ontological tensions in sixteenth and seventeenth century chemistry: between mechanism and vitalism |
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Authors: | Email author" target="_blank">Marina?Paola?Banchetti-RobinoEmail author |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, Florida Atlantic University, AH 110, 777 Glades Road, P.O. Box 3091, Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991, USA |
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Abstract: | The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marks a period of transition between the vitalistic ontology that had dominated Renaissance
natural philosophy and the Early Modern mechanistic paradigm endorsed by, among others, the Cartesians and Newtonians. This
paper will focus on how the tensions between vitalism and mechanism played themselves out in the context of sixteenth and
seventeenth century chemistry and chemical philosophy, particularly in the works of Paracelsus, Jan Baptista Van Helmont,
Robert Fludd, and Robert Boyle. Rather than argue that these natural philosophers each embraced either fully vitalistic or
fully mechanistic ontologies, I hope to demonstrate that these thinkers adhered to complicated and nuanced ontologies that
cannot be described in either purely vitalistic or purely mechanistic terms. A central feature of my argument is the claim
that a corpuscularian theory of matter does not entail a strictly mechanistic and reductionistic account of chemical properties.
I also argue that what marks the shift from pre-modern vitalistic chemical philosophy to the modern chemical philosophy that
marked the Chemical Revolution is not the victory of mechanism and reductionism in chemistry but, rather, the shift to a physicalistic
and naturalistic account of chemical properties and vital spirits. |
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