Ori Belkind

This paper contends that Bacon's inductive method depends crucially on his general account of matter. I argue that Bacon develops a dynamic form of corpuscularianism, according to which aggregates of corpuscles undergo patterns of change that derive from active inclinations and appetites. The paper claims that Bacon's corpuscularianism provides him with a theory of material form that enables him to theorize bodily change and possible material transformations. The point of natural histories and experiments is then to find the processes of corpuscular change that correlate with making present or making absent simple natures.

This paper reconstructs Newton's metaphysics from various comments by Newton on substance. The paper argues that Newton introduces important innovations to traditional concepts of metaphysics. The first innovation consists of Newton's critique of the notion of inherence and the relation between matter and form as described by Aristotle. Second is the association Newton makes between the notion of substance and the actions of substances, such that the reality of substances consists in the actions they are able to induce in other substances. And third is Newton's taking the presence of substances in space as necessary for articulating the notion of substantial action, which demonstrates the central role of Space in Newton's metaphysics. This reconstruction also explains Newton's various comments about the nature of Space, including his claim that Space is an emanative effect of God.

In this paper I argue that the positivist-conventionalist interpretation of the Restricted Principle of Relativity is flawed, due to the positivists' own understanding of conventions and their origins. I claim in the paper that, to understand the conventionalist thesis, one has to diambiguate between three types of convention; the linguistic conventions stemming from the fundamental role of mathematical axioms (conceptual conventions), the conventions stemming from the coordination betweeh theoretical statements and physical, observable facts or entities (coordinative definitions), and conventions that are made possible by possible revisions to theory (the thesis of empirical underdetermination). I claim that it is not possible to interpret the Principle of Relativity as based on one of these three types of convention. This renders the conventionalist interpretation of the Principle of Relativity untenable. The paper is part of a larger project that aims to understand the philosophical significance of the Principle of Relativity.

This paper's aim is to explain the transition that occurred during the Early Modern period, from Principles of Nature to Laws of Nature. Natural Principles are taken to be innate to substances and arise from their natures, while Laws of Nature are external and imposed from without. The paper takes the view that to explain this transition, one needs to examine the history of philosophical theories of substantial action. It argues that during the late Middle Ages and in the Early Modern era, philosophers began to disentangle substantial actions from the nature of substances. This process of disentangling action eventually led to the concept of Laws of Nature, according to which laws compel a body to act in a certain way even though its nature does not.

This paper aims to advance two claims. First, it aims to show that Hume's argument against the rationality of induction is sound. However, I claim that the conclusion does not follow merely from the self-defeating attempts to justify the rule of induction, unlike traditional readings of the argument. Rather, the skeptical conclusion must also take into account Hume's argument that the secret powers that are present in bodies and give rise to sensible qualities are unknowable. The paper's second aim is to show that Newtonian induction escapes Hume's secret powers argument, given that it includes a transductive inference, from observable phenomena to the powers present in the ultimate parts of matter. Consequently Hume's argument against the rationality of induction does not demonstrate the non-rational nature of Newtonian induction.

This paper examines Newton's method of induction and its connection to methodological atomism. The paper argues that Newton's Rule III for the Study of Natural Philosophy is a criterion for isolating the primary qualities of the atomic parts; in other words, it interprets Rule III as a transductive inference. It is shown that both the standard inductive and invariance interpretations of Rule III can be subsumed under the transductive view, although the invariance criterion is reinterpreted; by qualities "that cannot be intended or remitted," Newton means qualities that are invariant under changes in the configuration of the atomic parts.