Will and artifice

The impact of voluntarist theology on early-modern science

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11348342
AutoresFrancis Oakley (Williams College, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen45
Número6
Páginas767-784
Fecha de publicación2019-08-18
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHistory of European Ideas (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01916599.2019.1628583
OpenAlexW2954323520
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas40

This article is in part an intervention in the ongoing debate inaugurated by Peter Harrison in 2002 when he called into question the validity of what had come by then to be called ‘the voluntarism and science thesis.’ Though it subsequently drew support from such historians of science as J.E. McGuire, Margaret Osler, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and, more recently, John Henry (in rebuttal of Harrison), the origins of the thesis are usually traced back to articles published in 1934–1936 and 1961 respectively by the philosopher Michael Foster and the historian of ideas Francis Oakley. While classifying Foster’s work as pertaining to the ecology of ideas rather than their history, the article argues for the complementarity of the two approaches and seeks, not only to vindicate the voluntarism and science thesis itself but also to locate it within the broader constellation of ideas embracing legal and political as well as natural philosophy that the political philosopher Michael Oakeshott characterized as pertaining to a fundamental tradition of European thinking dominated by the master conceptions of Will and Artifice

Complementarity (molecular biology · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Rebuttal · Sociology · Voluntarism (philosophy · Classics · Historical Philosophy and Science · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought