Monsters, laws of nature, and teleology in late scholastic textbooks

In the period of emergence of early modern science, ‘monsters’ or individuals with physical congenital anomalies were considered as rare events which required special explanations entailing assumptions about the laws of nature. This concern with monsters was shared by representatives of the new scie...

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Autores principales: Manzo, Silvia Alejandra, Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Rodolfo Garau
Formato: Libro Capitulo de libro
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: Springer, Cham 2019
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Acceso en línea:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/125242
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id I19-R120-10915-125242
record_format dspace
institution Universidad Nacional de La Plata
institution_str I-19
repository_str R-120
collection SEDICI (UNLP)
language Inglés
topic Filosofía
Epistemology
Natural law
Character (symbol)
Secondary causation
Scholasticism
Scientific revolution
Naturalism
Teleology
History
spellingShingle Filosofía
Epistemology
Natural law
Character (symbol)
Secondary causation
Scholasticism
Scientific revolution
Naturalism
Teleology
History
Manzo, Silvia Alejandra
Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Rodolfo Garau
Monsters, laws of nature, and teleology in late scholastic textbooks
topic_facet Filosofía
Epistemology
Natural law
Character (symbol)
Secondary causation
Scholasticism
Scientific revolution
Naturalism
Teleology
History
description In the period of emergence of early modern science, ‘monsters’ or individuals with physical congenital anomalies were considered as rare events which required special explanations entailing assumptions about the laws of nature. This concern with monsters was shared by representatives of the new science and Late Scholastic authors of university textbooks. This paper will reconstruct the main theses of the treatment of monsters in Late Scholastic textbooks, by focusing on the question as to how their accounts conceived nature’s regularity and teleology. It shows that they developed a naturalistic teratology in which, in contrast to the naturalistic explanations usually offered by the new science, finality was at central stage. This general point does not impede our noticing that some authors were closer to the views emerging in the Scientific Revolution insofar as they conceived nature as relatively autonomous from God and gave a relevant place to efficient secondary causation. In this connection, this paper suggests that the concept of the laws of nature developed by the new science –as exception-less regularities—transferred to nature’s regularity the ‘strong’ character that Late Scholasticism attributed to finality and that the decline of the Late Scholastic view of finality played as an important concomitant factor permitting the transformation of the concept of laws of nature.
format Libro
Capitulo de libro
author Manzo, Silvia Alejandra
Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Rodolfo Garau
author_facet Manzo, Silvia Alejandra
Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Rodolfo Garau
author_sort Manzo, Silvia Alejandra
title Monsters, laws of nature, and teleology in late scholastic textbooks
title_short Monsters, laws of nature, and teleology in late scholastic textbooks
title_full Monsters, laws of nature, and teleology in late scholastic textbooks
title_fullStr Monsters, laws of nature, and teleology in late scholastic textbooks
title_full_unstemmed Monsters, laws of nature, and teleology in late scholastic textbooks
title_sort monsters, laws of nature, and teleology in late scholastic textbooks
publisher Springer, Cham
publishDate 2019
url http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/125242
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