Voluntarism and the Origins of Modern Science: A Reply to John Henry

Henry John , “Voluntarist theology at the origins of modern science: A response to Peter Harrison”, History of science, xlvii (2009), 79–113.

Foster M. B. , “The Christian doctrine of creation and the rise of modern natural science”, Mind, n.s. xliii (1934), 446–68.

Foster , “Christian doctrine of creation” (ref. 2), 446.

Foster , “Christian doctrine of creation” (ref. 2), 464.

Knud Haakonssen has spoken in this context of “the epistemological paradigm”. See his discussion of the rationalism/empiricism dichotomy in “The history of eighteenth-century philosophy: History or philosophy?”, in The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century philosophy, ed. by Haakonssen Knud (Cambridge, 2006), 3–25. For a persuasive account of an alternative division, see Anstey Peter , “Experimental versus speculative natural philosophy”, in Anstey Peter Schuster John (eds), The science of nature in the seventeenth century (Dordrecht, 2005), 215–42.

Heimann Peter , “Voluntarism and immanence: Conceptions of nature in eighteenth-century thought”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxix (1978), 271–83, p. 273.

McGuire J. E. , “Boyle's conception of nature”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxiii (1972), 523–42, pp. 525, 532. Heimann , interestingly, allows that voluntarist theology influenced Descartes, as well as Boyle and Newton, “Voluntarism and immanence” (ref. 6), 272.

It is also possible that he regarded occasionalism as an ad hoc doctrine about the relation of soul to body.

Schmaltz Tad M. , Descartes on causation (Oxford, 2008), 12–23; Fakhry Majid , Islamic occasionalism and its critique by Averroes and Aquinas (London, 1958); Wolfson H. A. , The philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA, 1976); Marmura Michael , “Al-Ghazali”, in Adamson Peter Taylor Richard C. (eds), The Cambridge companion to Arabic philosophy (Cambridge, 2005), 137–54; Glasner Ruth , “Ibn Rushd's theory of Minima naturalia“, Arabic science and philosophy, xi (2001), 2001–26.

Boyle Robert , The Christian virtuoso, the first part , in Hunter Michael Davis Edward B. (eds), The works of Robert Boyle, xi (London, 2000), 301, 302. Whether Descartes himself was an occasionalist is not entirely clear. See Nadler Steven , (ed.), Causation in early modern philosophy (University Park, 1993). For a recent discussion which concludes that he was not, see Schmaltz , Descartes on causation (ref. 9).

See Shanahan Timothy , “God and nature in the thought of Robert Boyle”, Journal of the history of philosophy, xxvi (1988), 556–9; Anstey Peter , “Boyle on occasionalism: An unexamined source”, Journal of the history of ideas, lx (1999), 1999–81. Anstey provides a helpful history of interpretations of Boyle on this issue.

Harrison Peter , The Fall of Man and the foundations of science (Cambridge, 2007).

Aquinas , Summa theologiae 1a. 25, 6; On the power of God, Book 1 Q. 1 A. 5 Obj. 15; Summa contra Gentiles, Book 1, ch. 81.

de Montoya Ruiz , Commentaria ac disputationes in primam partem Sancti Thomae, De voluntate Dei (Lyons, 1630); Granado Diego , Comentarii in primam partem Summae Theologicae Sancti Thomae (Pont-a-Mousson, 1624), 420–33. On this issue more generally see Ramelow Tilman , Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl: Der Ursprung des Begriffes der besten aller möglichen Welten in der Metaphysik der Willensfreiheit zwischen Antonio Perez S.J. (1599–1649) und Leibnitz G. W. (1646–1716) (Leiden, 1997), and Murray Michael , “Intellect, will, and freedom: Leibniz and his precursors”, The Leibniz review, vi (1996), 1996–60. See also Cudworth Ralph , A treatise of freewill, in Treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality with A treatise of freewill, ed. by Hutton Sarah (Cambridge, 1996), 187–9; Descartes René , Principles of philosophy, in The philosophical writings of Descartes, transl. by Cottingham John , Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge, 1984), i, 256.

Galilei Galileo , Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems, transl. by Drake Stillman (Berkeley, 1967), 464.

Descartes , op. cit. (ref. 14), i, 231. In the Principles Descartes makes another apparently voluntarist statement: “Since there are countless different configurations which God might have instituted here, experience alone must teach us which configurations he actually selected in preference to the rest” (p. 256). Compare Newton (quoted by Henry, op. cit. (ref. 1), 88): “The world might have been otherwise then it is (because there may be worlds otherwise framed then this.” Admittedly, Descartes's statement comes in the context of a highly speculative cosmogony, to which the Newtonians took exception.

Henry John , “Metaphysics and the origins of modern science: Descartes and the importance of laws of nature”, Early science and medicine, ix (2004), 73–114.