Axioms, Hypotheses, Common Notions: Foundational Principles of Experimental and Natural Science in the Newtonian Controversies

9 November 2023
- 10 November 2023
Maison Française d'Oxford, Oxford
Conference funded by “The Common Notion. Science and Consensus in the Seventeenth Century” (NOTCOM, ERC AdG. 101052433, CNRS-MFO/IHRIM, 2023-2027, dir. M. Lærke) and “Responses to Newton’s Mathematical-Experimental Paradigm in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy” (RENEW18, an Excellence of Science project (EOS O.0034.22F) funded by the FWO and F.R.S.-FNRS, Belgium, dir. K. de Boer, S. Ducheyne, and A. Pelletier).

Programme:

Thursday 9/11
12:45-13:00. Welcome (Mogens Lærke, CNRS-MFO/IHRIM)
Chair: Ohad Nachtomy (Technion, Haifa)
13:00-13:45. Peter Anstey (Christ Church, Oxford / University of Sydney), “Hypotheses as Principles.”
13:45-14:30. Vincenzo de Risi (CNRS-SPHERE, Paris), “Axioms and Postulates in Seventeenth-Century British Mathematics.”
Break
Chair: Sophie Roux (ENS PSL)
15:00-15:45. Ovidiu Babes (VUB), “Robert Greene on Abstract Notions and the Principles of Material Bodies.”
|5:45-16:30. Steffen Ducheyne (VUB), ““Reason [...] but a dim Light in comparison with Revelation”: Robert Greene’s religious critique of natural philosophy.”
Break
Chair: Robert Illife (Linacre, Oxford)
16:45-17:30. Scott Mandelbrote (Peterhouse, Cambridge), “The “Book of Nature”, Nature and nature.”
17.30-18:15. Kirsten Walsh (Exeter): “Situated Cognition in Early Modern Experimentation: the Case of Compelled Assent.”

Friday 10/11
Chair: Raphaële Andrault (CNRS, IHRIM)
9:30-10:15. Laura Georgescu (Groningen), “From Digby’s to Sergeant’s Theory of Notions.”
10:15-11:00. Marco Storni (ULB): “Beyond Descartes: The Principles of Demonstration in Late French Cartesianism (1730s-1770s).”
Break
Chair: Anne-Lise Rey (Paris-Nanterre)
11:30-12:15. Arnaud Pelletier (ULB), “On Michael Gottlieb Hansch’s Leibnizian Foundations of Natural Science.”
12:15-13:00. Dmitri Levitin (Utrecht / All Souls, Oxford), “Newton’s Rules in Polemical Context.”

Newton Poster 9-10 November Finale 11