Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge.     This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. 

Dana Jalobeanu is lecturer in Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, member of the research centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science CELFIS, and of the research center Foundations of Early Modern Thought (FEM), University of Bucharest. She is the executive editor of the journal Societate si politica and co-editor of the Journal of Early Modern Studies. She is general secretary of the International Society for Intellectual History and member of the steering committee of HOPOS. She is one of the initiators and co-organizers, since 2001, of the Princeton-Bucharest seminar in early modern philosophy (12 editions since 2001). Research interests: the emergence of science, experimental philosophy from Bacon to Newton. Perspective: integrated HPS. She is Principal Investigator of a 4 year research grant From natural history of science (2011-2015) and the Romanian coordinator of a European Research Council grant (The medicine of the mind and natural philosophy in early modern England) held jointly by The Warburg Institute and New Europe College (Bucharest).

She has co-edited (with Peter Anstey), Vanishing matter and the laws of nature: Descartes and beyond, Routledge: London, 2011. Recent articles: Learning from experiment: classification, concept formation and modeling in Francis Bacon’s experimental philosophy, Revue Roumaine de philosophie 57 (1) (2013) 75-93, Idolatry, Natural History and Spiritual Medicine: Francis Bacon and the Neo-Stoic Protestantism of the Late Sixteenth Century, Perspectives on Science, 21: 2012: 207-226, Francis Bacon’s natural history and the Senecan Natural Histories of Early Modern Europe, Early Science and Medicine, 17: 1-2, 2012, pp. 197-229, Bacon’s Brotherhood and its classical sources, in Francis Bacon and the birth of technology, edited by Claus Zittel, Gisela Engel, Romano Nanni, Intersections 11/(2008), Brill, vol I, 197-230.

Charles T. Wolfe is a Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences and Sarton Centre for History of Science, Ghent University, and an Associate Member of the Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney and CFCUL, Department of Philosophy, University of Lisbon. He is also responsible for the lecture series in history and philosophy of science in the Sarton Centre for History of Science at Ghent. He works primarily in history and philosophy of the early modern life sciences, with a particular interest in materialism and vitalism. He has edited volumes including Monsters and Philosophy (2005), The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge (2010, with O. Gal), Vitalism and the scientific image in post-Enlightenment life-science (2013, with S. Normandin) and Brain Theory. Essays in Critical Neurophilosophy (2014), and has papers in journals including Dix-huitième siècle, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, La Lettre clandestine, Multitudes, Perspectives on Science, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Science in Context and others. His current project is a monograph on the conceptual foundations of Enlightenment vitalism, in addition to several editorial projects on Enlightenment biology (w. C. Bognon) and early modern clandestine thought (w. S. Bisset and M.-C. Felton). He is also the founding editor of the Springer series in History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences.