Works by Antoni Malet
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- Isaac Barrow on the Mathematization of Nature: Theological Voluntarism and the Rise of Geometrical Optics.Antoni Malet -1997 -Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (2):265-287.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Isaac Barrow on the Mathematization of Nature: Theological Voluntarism and the Rise of Geometrical OpticsAntoni MaletIntroductionIsaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy embodies a strong program of mathematization that departs both from the mechanical philosophy of Cartesian inspiration and from Boyle’s experimental philosophy. The roots of Newton’s mathematization of nature, this paper aims to demonstrate, are to be found in Isaac Barrow’s (1630–77) philosophy of the mathematical sciences.Barrow’s attitude (...) towards natural philosophy evolved from his earnest interest in medicine of around 1650, when a young Cambridge graduate, to natural philosophy (apparently under Henry More’s influence); from his thesis on the insufficiency of the Cartesian hypothesis to geometrical optics and the strong program of mathematization of natural philosophy of the middle 1660s; from Lucasian professor of Mathematics to Chaplain of his Majesty and eminent Restoration divine. Contemporary accounts of Barrow’s life suggest that he grew ever more skeptical about the worth of natural philosophy and mathematics. 1 In his last years he became a prolific [End Page 265] author of sermons and theological works. Published shortly after his death by John Tillotson (1630–94), later archbishop of Canterbury, they occupy over two thousand folio pages. Overloaded with involved philosophical arguments, Barrow’s sermons were apparently not very popular, but they were highly regarded by scholars and the Anglican hierarchy. 2 It is on certain of his sermons, as well as on the philosophical discussions contained in the Mathematical Lectures that our account of Barrow’s philosophy of the mathematical sciences will rest. 3 Barrow’s understanding of the mathematical sciences will allow us to discuss together three issues often analyzed independently: the theological background to English natural philosophy, the changing notion of mixed mathematical sciences during the seventeenth century, and finally the philosophical foundations of modern geometrical optics.It has long been recognized that significant relationships exist between theological voluntarism or intellectualism and views on natural philosophy. In particular Robert Boyle’s theological voluntarism is seen as grounding his experimentalist approach to natural philosophy. It is not quite so clear, however, how well theological voluntarism may relate to a strong program of mathematization such as the one embodied in Newton’s Principia Mathematica. In fact it has been suggested that the relationship is a negative one. This is derived from the necessary character of mathematical laws, which would put unwanted restrictions on God’s absolute dominion over nature, and also from the notion that theological intellectualism is conducive to a deductive, a priori science—the paradigm of which is of course geometry. However, Barrow’s theological voluntarism lead him to heighten the role of mathematics within natural philosophy.During the seventeenth century the so-called mixed or subalternate mathematical sciences changed profoundly. In the Enlightenment mixed mathematics—meaning above all rational mechanics—became one of the most prestigious and influential disciplines. The mixed mathematics of the Enlightenment, however, was markedly different from the Aristotelian [End Page 266] mixed mathematical sciences. The differences are noticeable both in the subject matter and in the substitution of mathematical infinitesimal analysis for geometrical synthesis, but also in the way of grounding mathematical theory on empirical evidence. Barrow’s Mathematical Lectures (delivered at Cambridge from 1664 to 1666) offer a fresh insight into the metamorphosis of these sciences just when Newton’s “mathematical principles” were in the making. Not the least interesting feature of Barrow’s discussion is that God’s omnipotence allows an evaluation of the truth of mathematical theories that do not apply to this world. Therefore, Barrow is led to introduce the distinction between the internal consistency, or mathematical truth, of a mathematical theory and its physical truth. This, in turn, leads him to the notion that theories need testing.Barrow on Matter and GodRecent literature has established significant correlations between theological voluntarism and empiricism, as well as between theological intellectualism and rationalism. As E. B. Davis writes, “the Christian doctrine of creation is a dialogue between God’s unconstrained will, which utterly transcends the bounds of human comprehension, and God’s orderly intellect, which serves as the model for the human mind.” Intellectualist theology considers God’s omniscience His... (shrink)
- The power of images: mathematics and metaphysics in Hobbes's optics.Antoni Malet -2001 -Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 32 (2):303-333.This paper deals with Hobbes's theory of optical images, developed in his optical magnum opus, ‘A Minute or First Draught of the Optiques’, and published in abridged version in De homine. The paper suggests that Hobbes's theory of vision and images serves him to ground his philosophy of man on his philosophy of body. Furthermore, since this part of Hobbes's work on optics is the most thoroughly geometrical, it reveals a good deal about the role of mathematics in Hobbes's philosophy. (...) The paper points to some difficulties in the thesis of Shapin and Schaffer, who presented geometry as a ‘paradigm’ for Hobbes's natural philosophy. It will be argued here that Hobbes's application of geometry to optics was dictated by his metaphysical and epistemological principles, not by a blind belief in the power of geometry. Geometry supported causal explanation, and assisted reason in making sense of appearances by helping the philosopher understand the relationships between the world outside us and the images it produces in us. Finally the paper broadly suggests how Hobbes's theory of images may have triggered, by negative example, the flourishing of geometrical optics in Restoration England. (shrink)
- Keplerian Illusions: Geometrical Pictures "vs" Optical Images in Kepler's Visual Theory.Antoni Malet -1990 -Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (1):1.
- Milliet Dechales as Historian of Mathematics.Antoni Malet -2022 -Perspectives on Science 30 (3):463-492.The Jesuit C.F. Milliet Dechales, author of one of the most famous early modern mathematical encyclopedias, Cursus seu mundus mathematicus, wrote a hundred-folio-page long treatise devoted to the “progress of mathematics,” which was published in the second, enlarged edition of his encyclopedia. His historical treatise covers the gamut of mixed mathematics—including astronomy, mechanics, optics, music, geography and navigation, ars tignaria, and architecture. The early modern historical narratives about the mathematical sciences, from Regiomontanus’s Oratio onwards, have been aptly characterized by their (...) literary form and goals rather than their historical content. Rhetoric, humanistic topoi, and philosophical filiation turned the histories of mathematics into powerful tools for different purposes. My account of Dechales’ tract on the “progress of mathematics” analyzes the ways in which it dovetails with Jesuit approaches to mathematics, provides legitimation to the mathematical sciences as well as to their authors, and contributes to define the role and boundaries of the discipline, in particular vis-à-vis natural philosophy. (shrink)
- Kepler and the Telescope.Antoni Malet -2003 -Annals of Science 60 (2):107-136.There is an uncanny unanimity about the founding role of Kepler's Dioptrice in the theory of optical instruments and for classical geometric optics generally. It has been argued, however, that for more than fifty years optical theory in general, and Dioptrice in particular, was irrelevant for the purposes of telescope making. This article explores the nature of Kepler's achievement in his Dioptrice . It aims to understand the Keplerian 'theory' of the telescope in its own terms, and particularly its links (...) to Kepler's theory of vision. It deals first with Kepler's way to circumvent his ignorance of the law of refraction, before turning to Kepler's explanations of why lenses magnify and invert vision. Next, it analyses Kepler's account of the properties of telescopes and his suggestions to improve their designs. The uses of experiments in Dioptrice , as well as the explicit and implicit references to della Porta's work that it contains, are also elucidated. Finally, it clarifies the status of Kepler's Dioptrice vis-à-vis , classical geometrical optics and presents evidence about its influence in treatises about the practice of telescope making during roughly the first two-thirds of the seventeenth century. (shrink)
- Fifteen years of the history of science in Europe: Personal reflections by the ESHS presidents.Koen Vermeir,Claude Debru,Robert Fox,Eberhard Knobloch,Helge Kragh,Soňa Štrbáňová,Fabio Bevilacqua,Karine Chemla &Antoni Malet -2018 -Centaurus 60 (1-2):104-123.No categories
- Science and power: Francoist Spain (1939–1975) as a case study.Antoni Malet -2019 -Centaurus 61 (1-2):111-132.This paper takes Franco's Spain to be a powerful case study for analyzing the ways in which power shapes science and technology and is shaped by them in return. Spain was the last country in Western Europe to establish closer links with any of the international cooperative institutions emerging after WWII. As such, developments internal to Spanish society were quite autonomous and relatively free from foreign influences. The paper focuses first on the brand new, powerful institution that the Francoist regime (...) created to promote scientific research under tight political control, the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Next it turns to applied science and technology, top priorities for the regime's state-supported programs of industrialization. They were implemented through the politically and financially powerful Instituto Nacional de Industria. Using diplomatic sources, the paper next argues that, until the late 1950s, Spain maintained substantial political and economic isolation essentially because the regime bet on autarkic policies and a model of largely isolated development. In this model, it was crucial for the regime to develop its own technological and scientific resources. Finally, the paper examines how the regime fostered a new Spanish identity in which science had a new role. (shrink)No categories
- From indivisibles to infinitesimals.Antoni Malet &C. W. Kilmister -1998 -Annals of Science 55 (3):325.
- José María Albareda (1902–1966) and the formation of the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.Antoni Malet -2009 -Annals of Science 66 (3):307-332.Summary José María Albareda (1902–1966) was an applied chemist and a prominent member of the Roman Catholic organization, Opus Dei, who played a crucial role in organizing the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the new scientific institution created by the Franco regime in 1939. The paper analyses first the formative years in Albareda's scientific biography and the political and social context in which he became an Opus Dei fellow. Then it discusses the CSIC's innovative features compared with the Junta (...) para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE), the institution in charge of scientific research and science policy in Spain from 1907 up to the Civil War (1936–1939). Next it goes into Albareda's ideas about science and science policy. Finally, it shows how they shaped the organization of the CSIC, of which Albareda was the General Secretary from 1939 to his untimely death in 1966. (shrink)No categories
- Barrow, Wallis, and the Remaking of Seventeenth Century Indivisibles.Antoni Malet -1997 -Centaurus 39 (1):67-92.No categories
- Early Conceptualizations of the Telescope as an Optical Instrument.Antoni Malet -2005 -Early Science and Medicine 10 (2):237-262.This article focuses on some theoretical developments prompted by the use and construction of telescopes in the first half of the seventeenth century. It argues that today's notion of "scientific instrument" cannot be used to categorize these optical devices or explain their impact on natural philosophy. The article analyzes in historical terms the construction of conceptual references for the telescope as an instrument of a new kind, which possessed capabilities and working principles unlike those of traditional "mathematical instruments." It shows (...) that through the 1650s, in both rhetorical and explanatory terms, first-rank telescope makers, theoreticians, and astronomers found it useful to equate the telescope with the eye, suggesting that the data the telescope produced was as reliable as that obtained in naked-eye vision. Kepler's and Descartes' theory of the telescope will be shown to dovetail uncannily with this understanding of the telescope. (shrink)
- Analysis and Synthesis in Mathematics: History and Philosophy. Michael Otte, Marco Panza.Antoni Malet -2000 -Isis 91 (1):135-136.
- El papel político de la delegación del CSIC en Catalunya (1941-1956).Antoni Malet -1998 -Arbor 160 (631-632):413-439.Aunque el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas fue una institución fundamental para la vida intelectual y científica del y durante el franquismo, sigue gozando de una casi completa invisibilidad en la historiografía. Este artículo quiere analizar el papel político que desempeñó el Consejo como instrumento especialmente útil para enfrentarse al catalanismo. Por una parte, sirvió para desarmarlo institucionalmente y, por otra, para neutralizar la ideología catalanista, tan arraigada entre los intelectuales catalanes antes de la Guerra Civil. El CSIC desempeñó este (...) papel de una forma bastante más sutil e inteligente que muchos críticos del franquismo reconocen. (shrink)No categories
- Itinerari del volontarismo: Teologia e politica al tempo di Luis de Leon. Domenico Ferraro.Antoni Malet -1996 -Isis 87 (2):352-353.
- Luis García Ballester, 14 February 1936–10 October 2000.Antoni Malet -2003 -Isis 94 (4):669-671.
- Mersenne and Mixed Mathematics.Antoni Malet &Daniele Cozzoli -2010 -Perspectives on Science 18 (1):1-8.
- Mathematics and mathematization in the seventeenth century.Antoni Malet -1991 -Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 22 (4):673-678.This paper is an essay-review of J. Yoder's "Unrolling Time: Christian Huygens and the Mathematization of Nature" (Cambridge, 1989). Highlighting the scholarly thoroughness and mathematical competence of Yoder's reconstruction of Huygens's heuristic path to his ground-breaking results on centrifugal force, cycloidal motion and evolutes, the essay also deals with Yoder's attempts to characterize Huygens's way of using mathematics in physical problems. In opposition to Yoder's thesis, this paper argues that evidence internal to Huygens's work as well as the contemporary reaction (...) to it suggest the existence of substantial methodological differences between Huygens's mathematization of nature and Newton's. (shrink)
- Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Practice in the Seventeenth Century. Paolo Mancosu.Antoni Malet -1997 -Isis 88 (1):140-141.
- Reasoning with the Infinite: From the Closed World to the Mathematical Universe. Michel Blay, M. B. DeBevoise.Antoni Malet -2000 -Isis 91 (4):778-779.
- The Fire within the Eye: A Historical Essay on the Nature and Meaning of Light. David Park.Antoni Malet -1998 -Isis 89 (3):520-521.
- Apariencia y verdad: Estudio sobre la filosofia de P. L. M. de Maupertuis by Juan Arana Canedo-Arguelles. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -1993 -Isis 84:152-152.
- Bibliographia physico-mathematica hispanica . Volume 1: Libros y folletos, 1475-1600. Víctor Navarro Brotóns, Vicente L. Salavert Fabiani, Victòria Rosselló Botey, Víctor Darás Román. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -2001 -Isis 92 (2):362-363.
- Douglas M. Jesseph. Squaring the Circle: The War between Hobbes and Wallis. xiv + 419 pp., figs., app., bibl., index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1999. $80, £56 ; $28, £20. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -2002 -Isis 93 (4):694-695.
- Galileo Galilei, Diálogo sobre los dos máximos sistemas del mundo ptolemaico y copernicano, edited and translated by Antonio Beltrán Marí. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1994. Pp. lxxxiii + 417. ISBN 84-206-9412-6. No price given. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -1996 -British Journal for the History of Science 29 (1):92-93.No categories
- Jose María López Piñero and Víctor Navarro Brotons, Història de la ciència al País Valencià. València: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim, 1995. Pp. 661, illus. ISBN 84-7822-154-9. No price given. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -1998 -British Journal for the History of Science 31 (1):63-102.No categories
- J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James , Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi + 291. ISBN 0-521-43427-0. £37.50, $49.95. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -1995 -British Journal for the History of Science 28 (2):235-236.
- Luigi Maierú. John Wallis: Una vita per un progetto. 601 pp., illus., figs., bibl., index. Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino, 2007. €40. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -2008 -Isis 99 (4):842-843.
- Peter Barker and Roger Ariew , Revolution and Continuity: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Early Modern Science. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. v + 222. ISBN 0-8132-0738-X. $42.95. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -1993 -British Journal for the History of Science 26 (1):88-89.
- P. M. Harman and Alan E. Shapiro , The Investigation of Difficult Things. Essays on Newton and the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of D. T. Whiteside. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xvi + 531. ISBN 0-521-37435-9. £90.00. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -1993 -British Journal for the History of Science 26 (3):361-363.
- Rupert A. Hall, All Was Light: An Introduction to Newton's Opticks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Pp. xviii + 252. ISBN 0-19-853985-1. £35.00. - Alan E. Shapiro, Fits, Passions, and Paroxysms: Physics, Method, and Chemistry and Newton's Theories of Colored Bodies and Fits of Easy Reflection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xvii + 400. ISBN 0-521-40507-6. £45.00, $69.95. [REVIEW]Antoni Malet -1994 -British Journal for the History of Science 27 (4):474-476.
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David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
Aleksandra Samonek
Constantine Sandis
Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster
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