Late Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism
The dissemination of the works of Bacon, Harvey and Hobbes did not mark the end of the Aristotelian tradition; rather, with their latent Aristotelianism they promoted the integration of Aristotelian philosophy with the new science.
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Late Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism
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Aristotelianism, 1650–1670
The dissemination of the works of Bacon, Harvey and Hobbes did not mark the end of the Aristotelian tradition; rather, with their latent Aristotelianism they promoted the integration of Aristotelian philosophy with the new science. Indeed, Aristotelianism was the dominant philosophical movement of the second half of the seventeenth century as well, as witnessed by the large number of textbooks published in this period. Aristotelianism remained the official philosophy of British universities—newer trends had almost no influence on academic handbooks. The methodology and epistemology developed by British Aristotelians, with their empiricist leanings, remained the basis of the logic curriculum taught throughout the last 40 years of the century. Not only were the textbooks of the first half of the century reprinted, but new ones were written and published, clearly showing an empiricist strand. Among these was Thomas Lushington’s Logica analytica, published in 1650 by Francis Bacon’s great-nephew Nicholas.1 Unfortunately only one of the two projected parts was published, even though the second was ready to be printed, as Bacon testifies. The work deals prevalently with the issues of Aristotle’s De interpretatione. The most interesting part, entitled De argumentatione, has not survived, but we know its content from the author’s brief summary in his dedicatory preface. Although Lushington declares himself to be an Aristotelian, one is immediately struck by the inversion between the analytic and synthetic methods. Unfortunately, the reasons for this inversion are unknown. It may reflect the earliest circulation of Cartesian works, or the adoption of theories from Digby, but the tone of the editorial and authorial introductions suggests an adherence to the mathematical idea of analysis and synthesis, rather than the Aristotelian one. In fact, synthetic method proceeds
1 Cf. Thomas Lushington, Logica analytica. De principiis, regulis, et usu rationis rectae (London, 1650).
M. Sgarbi, The Aristotelian Tradition and the Rise of British Empiricism, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 32, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4951-1_10, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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Late Seventeenth-Century Aristotelianism
from the given data, and by composition elaborates a universal proposition in relation to that data, while analytic method proceeds from the ‘saying’ and by resolution determines the degree to which the universal properties pertain to the particulars.2 Lushington’s work, perhaps because of its unfinished state, was not successful and never reprinted; this probably explains the non-appearance of the second volume. More interesting is the Aristotelianism of Zachary Coke (b. 1618) in his The Art of Logick, published towards the end of 1653, but dated 1654.3 Coke’s textbook is heavily indebted to Airay’s Fasciculus and Keckermann’s Systema systematum.4 In particular, those pages that Coke draws from Keckermann are full of qu
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