Dormitive Powers and Scholastic Qualities: A Reply to Hutchison

Hutchison Keith , “Dormitive virtues, scholastic qualities, and the new philosophies”, History of science, xxix (1991), 245–77, ref. 3, p. 272.

See Clarke D. , Occult powers and hypotheses: Cartesian natural philosophy under Louis XIV (Oxford, 1989).

Hutchison , op. cit., 246.

ibid., 247.

ibid., 248.

ibid., 271 (emphasis added).

ibid., 272 (emphasis added).

ibid., 247.

ibid., 246, 263 and (for vacuous explanations) 253, 258, 270, 271.

ibid., 272, ref. 2.

de la Grange J.-B. , Les principes de la philosophie (Paris, 1675), 306–7 (transl. by Clarke ).

ibid., 209, 213.

Newton I. , Opticks (New York, 1952), 401.

de la Forge Louis , Traité de l'esprit de l'homme, in Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. by Clair P. (Paris, 1974), 76–77.

Ibid ., 251. Hutchison cites Occult powers in ref. 12 to support his discussion of fictionalism among the Cartesians. However, I think there is a big difference between the abandon with which the Cartesians used hypotheses and the concession that they are mere fictions. Descartes and his followers were, for the most part, scientific realists who were extremely tolerant of hypotheses even in those cases where they were most likely to be false.

“Bachelierus's claim is to be resisted then, because it does not have enough evidence behind it, not because it is vacuous” (Hutchison, op. cit., 253).

Berkeley George , Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (Indianapolis, 1979), Second Dialogue, 53.

See the discussion of this issue by Antoine Arnauld in On true and false ideas, transl. by Gaukroger S. (Manchester, 1990), 153–4.