The 12^th International Conference of
	ISSEI	In cooperation With
	International Society for the Study of European Ideas

Section II: Politics, Economics, Law

and

Section V: Religion, Philosophy, Anthropology, Psychology, Language

Workshop: The Interactions between Philosophy and Physics in the Seventeenth Century

Chair: Syliane Malinowski-Charles

The 17^th century marks a great shift in the history both of physics and of philosophy. In cosmology, this century saw the transition from the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology of the “closed world” to the “infinite universe” of material extension in Galileo and others, to re-use Alexandre Koyré’s famous phrase. In philosophy, the dualistic philosophy of Descartes challenged, and progressively replaced, the ancient hylomorphism of Aristotle and of the Scholastics. Finally, in physics itself, mechanism was born in conjunction to the two afore-mentioned changes, and it remained intrinsically related to the new dualistic philosophy of the time.

Such names as Galileo, Descartes, Newton and Boyle are but landmarks in a history that counts many lesser-known figures, as well as many opponents. Not only this workshop will be interested in exploring such lesser-known figures, in addition to the great achievements of the main theoreticians of mechanical physics; it will also focus on the main philosophers of the 17^th century, such as Hobbes, Leibniz, or Spinoza, in order to see how the new physics of the time imported its problems into their thoughts, and how it was answered by them. Among these stand in a prominent position such questions as the individuation of bodies, the relationship between mind and body, the status of the singular among the infinite whole, the force at play in extension, and the status of experiments vis-à-vis pure theory in the method of investigation.

The focus of this workshop will thus be twofold: to see how philosophy accompanied and, to a great extent, caused the birth of the mechanical physics of the 17^th century on the one hand, and to see how this physics reversely influenced philosophical debates on the other hand.

Syliane Malinowski-Charles

Philosophy department

Bishop’s University, Canada

Email: scharles@ubishops.ca

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