De Motu and the Analyst
De Motu and the Analyst

Author: G. Berkeley

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 9401125929

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Berkeley's philosophy has been much studied and discussed over the years, and a growing number of scholars have come to the realization that scientific and mathematical writings are an essential part of his philosophical enterprise. The aim of this volume is to present Berkeley's two most important scientific texts in a form which meets contemporary standards of scholarship while rendering them accessible to the modern reader. Although editions of both are contained in the fourth volume of the Works, these lack adequate introductions and do not provide com plete and corrected texts. The present edition contains a complete and critically established text of both De Motu and The Analyst, in addi tion to a new translation of De Motu. The introductions and notes are designed to provide the background necessary for a full understanding of Berkeley's account of science and mathematics. Although these two texts are very different, they are united by a shared a concern with the work of Newton and Leibniz. Berkeley's De Motu deals extensively with Newton's Principia and Leibniz's Specimen Dynamicum, while The Analyst critiques both Leibnizian and Newto nian mathematics. Berkeley is commonly thought of as a successor to Locke or Malebranche, but as these works show he is also a successor to Newton and Leibniz.

Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics
Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics

Author: Douglas M. Jesseph

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-12-15

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0226398951

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In this first modern, critical assessment of the place of mathematics in Berkeley's philosophy and Berkeley's place in the history of mathematics, Douglas M. Jesseph provides a bold reinterpretation of Berkeley's work. Jesseph challenges the prevailing view that Berkeley's mathematical writings are peripheral to his philosophy and argues that mathematics is in fact central to his thought, developing out of his critique of abstraction. Jesseph's argument situates Berkeley's ideas within the larger historical and intellectual context of the Scientific Revolution. Jesseph begins with Berkeley's radical opposition to the received view of mathematics in the philosophy of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when mathematics was considered a "science of abstractions." Since this view seriously conflicted with Berkeley's critique of abstract ideas, Jesseph contends that he was forced to come up with a nonabstract philosophy of mathematics. Jesseph examines Berkeley's unique treatments of geometry and arithmetic and his famous critique of the calculus in The Analyst. By putting Berkeley's mathematical writings in the perspective of his larger philosophical project and examining their impact on eighteenth-century British mathematics, Jesseph makes a major contribution to philosophy and to the history and philosophy of science.

The Oxford Handbook of Berkeley
The Oxford Handbook of Berkeley

Author:

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 0190873426

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The Oxford Handbook of Berkeley is a compendious examination of a vast array of topics in the philosophy of George Berkeley (1685-1753), Anglican Bishop of Cloyne, the famous idealist and most illustrious Irish philosopher. Berkeley is best known for his denial of the existence of material substance and his insistence that the only things that exist in the universe are minds (including God) and their ideas; however, Berkeley was a polymath who contributed to a variety of different disciplines, not well distinguished from philosophy in the eighteenth century, including the theory and psychology of vision, the nature and functioning of language, the debate over infinitesimals in mathematics, political philosophy, economics, chemistry (including his favoured panacea, tar-water), and theology. This volume includes contributions from thirty-four expert commentators on Berkeley's philosophy, some of whom provide a state-of-the-art account of his philosophical achievements, and some of whom place his philosophy in historical context by comparing and contrasting it with the views of his contemporaries (including Mandeville, Collier, and Edwards), as well as with philosophers who preceded him (such as Descartes, Locke, Malebranche, and Leibniz) and others who succeeded him (such as Hume, Reid, Kant, and Shepherd).

Berkeley’s Renovation of Philosophy
Berkeley’s Renovation of Philosophy

Author: Gavin Ardley

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 9401188726

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In this work I have endeavoured to see Berkeley in his contemporary setting. On the principle that philosophy is ultimately about men, not about abstract problems, I have tried to see Berkeley the philosopher as an expression of Berkeley the man. When this is done, what is perennial in the philosophy may be discerned in and through what is local and temporal. Berkeley then emerges as a pioneer reformer; not so much an innovator as a renovator; one who set out to rescue phi losophy from the enthusiasms of the preceding age; one who strove to seat philosophy once more on the broad human and common sense foundations laid by Plato and Aristotle. Critical studies of some of the more striking of Berkeley's epistemo logical arguments are legion. They commenced with the young Berke ley's first appearance in print, and have continued to this day. But whether they take the form of professions of support for Berkeley, or of bald refutations of Berkeley's supposed fallacies, or whether, like the contemporary "analytical" studies of Moore, Warnock, and Austin, they are subtle exposures of alleged deeply concealed logical muddles, they all tend to share one common characteristic: they select and abstract from the totality of Berkeley, and miss the robust simplicity and universality of Berkeley's intentions. It is the intentions which control the whole, and give the right perspective in which to view the various items.