Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Brading, Katherine
Stan, Marius (1973-....)
Titre(s) : Philosophical mechanics in the Age of Reason [Texte imprimé] / Katherine Brading and Marius Stan
Publication : New York (N.Y.) : Oxford University press, copyright 2023
Description matérielle : 1 volume (xii-431 pages) : illustrations ; 25 cm
Note(s) : Bibliographie pages [401]-413. Notes bibliographiques. Index
"From pebbles to planets, tigers to tables, pine trees to people; animate and inanimate,
natural and artificial; bodies are everywhere. Bodies populate the world, acting and
interacting with one another, and they are the subject-matter of Newton's laws of
motion. But what is a body? And how can we know how they behave? In 'Philosophical
Mechanics in the Age of Reason,' Katherine Brading and Marius Stan examine the struggle
for a theory of bodies. At the beginning of the 18th century, physics was the branch
of philosophy that studied bodies in general. Its primary task was to provide a qualitative
account of the nature of bodies, including their essential properties, causal powers,
and generic behaviors. Pursued by a variety of figures both canonical (from Leibniz
to Kant) and less familiar (from Du Châtelet and Euler to d'Alembert and Lagrange),
this proved a difficult task. At stake were the appropriate epistemologies and methods
for theorizing about the natural world. Solutions demanded the combined resources
of philosophy, physics, and mechanics: what Brading and Stan call a 'philosophical
mechanics.' Brading and Stan analyze a century of widespread, concerted efforts to
solve 'the problem of bodies,' they examine the consequences of the many failures,
both for the problem itself and for philosophy more generally. They reveal relationships
among disparate themes of 18th century physics and philosophy, from the nature of
matter to the motion of a vibrating string; causation to the principle of least action;
and the role of subtle matter in collision theory to analytic mechanics. All of these,
Brading and Stan argue, are related to the eventual emergence of physics as an independent
discipline, autonomous from philosophy, more than a century after Newton's 'Principia.'
This book provides a new framing of natural philosophy and its transformations in
the Enlightenment; and it proposes an account of how physics and philosophy evolved
into distinct fields of inquiry."
Sujet(s) : Raison -- 18e siècle
Physique -- Philosophie -- 18e siècle
Mécanique -- Philosophie -- 18e siècle
Philosophie des sciences -- 18e siècle
Philosophie de la nature -- 18e siècle
Indice(s) Dewey : 530.090 33 (23e éd.) = Physique - 1700-1799
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 0197678955. - ISBN 9780197678954 (rel.)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb47321045k
Notice n° :
FRBNF47321045
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
