Natural Philosophy

William Harvey's natural philosophy

The reception of Harvey's doctrines of the movement of the heart and of the circulation of blood was the result of a complex interaction of intellectual, political and social factors. As French's book shows, Harvey's views were not simply accepted or rejected; they were interpreted-and often misunderstood-in the light of different philosophical and religious ideas. In university faculties and c...

Qcd and Natural Philosophy

QCD sheds considerable light on several of the most basic features of the natural world including the origin of mass, the feebleness of gravity, the extent to which the properties of matter can be determined conceptually, the possible utility of the anthropic principle, and the metatheoretic notions of effectiveness and computability. I discuss these applications here. Contemporary academic or ...

5 Contributions to Natural Philosophy

Natural Philosophy and Quantum Theory

We attempt to show how relationalism might help in understanding Bell’s theorem. We also present an analogy with Darwinian evolution in order to pedagogically explain Bell’s theorem.

Focus: Natural Philosophy and Instrumentality

The mismatch between common representations of “science” and the miscellany of materials typically studied by the historian of science is traced to a systematic ambiguity that may itself be traced to early modern Europe. In that cultural setting, natural philosophy came to be rearticulated (most famously by Francis Bacon) as involving both contemplative and practical knowledge. The resulting te...