Early Modern Cosmology Between “Mosaic Physics” and Mechanical Philosophy (1650-1713)

Project Code: PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2016-0710

Principal Investigator: Mihnea Dobre

Abstract. This project explores the intermixture of several disciplines in the formation of “the new science” in the early modern period, spanning from Descartes’s death in 1650 up to the second edition of Newton’s Principia in 1713. It aims to show how philosophy, physics, and theology grounded new cosmologies and mingled in one coherent enterprise. Our proposal challenges the current focus on the Newtonian critique of Descartes’s vortex-model of the world. It argues that a new perspective upon the relations between Cartesianism and Newtonianism emerges by looking at early modern reconstructions of the Biblical account of Creation in mechanical terms. We analyse Descartes’s justificatory accounts in his correspondence, where he states that his physics is compatible with the Creation story from Genesis. Furthermore, we explore how these statements were developed by his early followers who were seeking to formulate a “Mosaic physics.” Our project examines this neglected episode of the publication and reception of several treatises comparing the Mosaic history of Creation with the new Cartesian philosophy. Beyond filling this gap in the study of early modern cosmology, our approach has a twofold advantage. First, it offers a source-oriented analysis of the “Mosaization” of Cartesian philosophy, bringing into the spotlight a series of currently lesser-known cosmological treatises which were very successful at their time and, thus, contributed to the spread of Cartesian philosophy. Second, it shows how Cartesianism – broadly understood – was a source of inspiration for cosmogonical and cosmological speculations even for figures who otherwise abandoned the Cartesian system, such as the early Newtonians. Thus, the project has a broader scope and our study of early modern cosmologies opens novel prospects for understanding the intricate early modern debates about religion, natural philosophy, and metaphysics.

Research Team:

Mihnea Dobre (Principal Investigator) is teaching and doing research at the University of Bucharest. He has a PhD in philosophy (Radboud University Nijmegen and University of Bucharest), and his research interest is in the history of philosophy and science. He works on the various aspects of the early modern period, with a focus on the relations between philosophy, science, and religion. He is the author of a monograph on Descartes and Early French Cartesianism: between metaphysics and physics (Zeta Books, 2017) and co-editor of the Cartesian Empiricisms volume (Springer, 2013). For a list of Dobre’s publications and conference papers, see his page. He is book review editor at the Centaurus, An International Journal of the History of Science and its Cultural Aspects. Dobre is the PI of this project.

Grigore Vida is a historian of the philosophy and science of the early modern period, member of the Research Center “Foundations of Modern Thought” and of the Center for Logic, History and Philosophy of Science (both at the University of Bucharest). He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Bucharest with the thesis Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy in Isaac Newton (2011). He has worked within a team on a Romanian edition of Descartes’ complete correspondence, and has also contributed to translations from the works of Francis Bacon. His main interest is the relation between metaphysics, natural philosophy and mathematics in the works of scientifically minded philosophers of the 17th century. In this project, he will investigate the interaction between Cartesianism and Newtonianism, the debate between Descartes and Henry More, and the cosmological project of Thomas Burnet.

Ovidiu Babeș is PhD student at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, writing a dissertation on the relation between mathematics and natural philosophy in Descartes’s works. His main area of research interest is in the history of early modern science (including here natural philosophy, history of mathematics, the rise of experimental philosophy). He has worked on topics such as early modern doctrines of demonstration, the status of mixed-mathematical disciplines within the Aristotelian division of sciences, Descartes’s optics and mechanics, the establishment of the Royal Society, and John Wilkins’s cosmology.

Bogdan-Antoniu Deznan is a PhD candidate at the University of Bucharest. He is also a research associate of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism (University of Cambridge). The topic of his doctoral dissertation is the concept of deification in the thought of the Cambridge Platonists (primarily Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Henry More, and Ralph Cudworth) and how this issue relates to the larger early modern theological and philosophical contexts. His primary research interests concern the history of theological and philosophical ideas in the early modern period, the appropriation of Patristic and Platonic/Neoplatonic sources in the seventeenth century, the theological underpinnings of natural philosophy, and the interplay between metaphysical and theological discourses.

Ioana Bujor is a PhD student at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest. For her doctoral dissertation she is working on a translation (from Latin into Romanian) of Baruch Spinoza’s Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae, focusing on the implications of Hebrew language in Spinoza’s thought.She has previously worked on the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, dealing with translation or interpretation of some key-chapters concerning hermeneutics of the Bible. Her primary research interests include early modern philosophy, philosophy of religion, Biblical exegesis, and Jewish philosophy.

Project development

October 2018

Research seminars.
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Despre miracole. Vorbitori: Cătălin Cioabă, Grigore Vida. Moderator: Dana Jalobeanu (26 octombrie 2018).

November 2018

Research seminars.

December 2018

Dobre, Mihnea. “Cartesian Cosmology Between ‘Mosaic Physics’ and Mechanical Philosophy,” at the Philosophical Cosmology in Early Modern Europe Workshop (Bucharest, 6-7 December 2018).
Research seminars.

January 2019

Research seminars.
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Ce a văzut Galileo? Despre telescop, hărți lunare și „privirea expertă” a filozofului naturii. Vorbitori: Dana Jalobeanu, Grigore Vida. Moderator: Ovidiu Babeș (11 ianuarie 2019).

February 2019

Research seminars.
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: La ce e bună istoria filosofiei? Vorbitori: Nora Grigore, Răzvan Ioan, Iovan Drehe, Grigore Vida. Moderator: Dana Jalobeanu (22 februarie 2019).

March 2019

Research seminars
Translation seminar (Cordemoy).

April 2019

Organising the conference on Laws of nature: the emergence of a new concept in early modern Europe (IRH-ICUB, Bucharest, 16 April 2019).
Dobre, Mihnea. “Between Cosmogony and Cosmology: a Cartesian View,” in the conference on Laws of nature: the emergence of a new concept in early modern Europe (IRH-ICUB, Bucharest, 16 April 2019).
Vida, Grigore and Ovidiu Babeș. Roundtable discussion: “Cartesian Cosmology: from Descartes to Locke,” in the conference on Laws of nature: the emergence of a new concept in early modern Europe (IRH-ICUB, Bucharest, 16 April 2019).
Translation seminar (Cordemoy).

May 2019

Research seminars
Translation seminar (Cordemoy).

June 2019

Participation in the Scientiae 2019 conference (Belfast, 12-15 June 2019):
- Deznan, Bogdan-Antoniu. “Identity and difference in the Godhead: Henry More and Ralph Cudworth,” in the Scientiae 2019 conference.
- Dobre, Mihnea. “Strategies of dissemination for Cartesian cosmology in the early modern Period,” in the Scientiae 2019 conference.
Organising the Bucharest-Princeton Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy (Bran, 24-28 June 2019):
- Deznan, Bogdan-Antoniu. “The God of thePlatonists in 17th Century England – Ralph Cudworth and the Metaphysics of Difference,” in the Bucharest-Princeton Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.
- Dobre, Mihnea. Co-organising (together with Dan Gaber & Scott Mandelbrote) the Reading group on “Cartesian Cosmology,” in the Bucharest-Princeton Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

July 2019

Translation seminar (Cordemoy).
Deznan, Bogdan-Antoniu. “The God of the Platonists in 17th Century England – Ralph Cudworth and the Metaphysics of Difference,” in the conference on The Cambridge Platonists at the Origins of Enlightenment: Texts, Debate, and Reception (1650-1730) (Cambridge, 18-19 July).

August 2019

Babeș, Ovidiu. “Individuating scientific practices: Anscombe and action descriptions,” in the conference on From φ-science to practical realism: an international conference in honour of Rein Vihalemm (1938–2015) (Tartu, Estonia, 13-14 August 2019).

September 2019

1 open position (part time) for doctoral students starting in November 2019. UB announcement / ANCS / EURAXESS.
Research visit at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (Mihnea Dobre).

October 2019

Research visit at the University of Cambridge (Bogdan Deznan).
Research visit at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (Mihnea Dobre).
Dobre, Mihnea. “Early Modern Textbooks and Digital Tools: exploring the transmission of knowledge” in the seminar Brown Bag Lunch in Digital Humanities (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 01.10.2019).
Dobre, Mihnea. “Géraud de Cordemoy on the Cartesian Theory of Animal Machines and the Use of Scripture” in the series of Premodern Conversations (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 17.10.2019).
A complete translation draft (in Romanian) of Cordemoy’s Copie d’une lettre écrite à un sçavant religieux de la Compagnie de Jésus (Paris, 1668).

November 2019

A new member joined the research team: Ioana Bujor.
Dobre, Mihnea. “Religion and Philosophy: Cartesian cosmology in the late seventeenth century” in the conference on Eclecticism and Eclectic Philosophy in the 17th and 18th Centuries (ICUB-Humanities and New Europe College, Bucharest, 04-05.11.2019).
Outreach: Dobre, Mihnea. Interview for “Radio Cultural” (04.11.2019).
Research seminars.

December 2019

Research seminar.
Organising the workshop on Forms of Cosmological Thinking in the Early Modern Period (ICUB-Humanities, Bucharest, 19 December 2019).
- Babeș, Ovidiu. “The Early Scope of the Vortex Theory, 1619-1644” in the workshop on Forms of Cosmological Thinking in the Early Modern Period (ICUB-Humanities, Bucharest, 19 December 2019).
- Bujor, Ioana. “The Quest for Reconciliation: J. Amerpoel’s Cartesius Mosaizans” in the workshop on Forms of Cosmological Thinking in the Early Modern Period (ICUB-Humanities, Bucharest, 19 December 2019).
- Deznan, Bogdan-Antoniu. “Eternal Ideas and the Issue of Divine Causality in the Cambridge Platonists” in the workshop on Forms of Cosmological Thinking in the Early Modern Period (ICUB-Humanities, Bucharest, 19 December 2019).
- Dobre, Mihnea. “Cosmological Imagination: Descartes and the early Cartesians” in the workshop on Forms of Cosmological Thinking in the Early Modern Period (ICUB-Humanities, Bucharest, 19 December 2019).
- Vida, Grigore. “Descartes as Bezaliel and Aholiab. Mosaic Physics and Mechanism in Henry More’s Conjectura Cabbalistica (1662)” in the workshop on Forms of Cosmological Thinking in the Early Modern Period (ICUB-Humanities, Bucharest, 19 December 2019).

January 2020

Research seminars.
Babeș, Ovidiu. “Bachelard, Pluralism and Epistemic Obstacles” in the workshop Turning the mirror: from scientific pluralism to pluralism in HPS, (Egenis, University of Exeter, UK, 8-9 January 2020);

February 2020

Research seminars (discussion of research papers written within the project).
Babeș, Ovidiu. “Descartes and Roberval on the Center of Agitation of a Composite Pendulum: Operationalizing Physical Concepts” in the workshop Séminaire d’histoire et philosophie des mathématiques de l’IMT, Toulouse, journée de recherche « Roberval », (Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse, France, 3-4 February 2020).
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Noica despre „Menon” de Platon. Vorbitori: Ștefan Vianu, Grigore Vida. Moderator: Filotheia Bogoiu (14 februarie 2020).

March 2020

Online collaborative work – Research seminars (discussion of drafts prepared within the project).
Due to the current pandemic, some of our planned activities have been canceled (in March: 2 conferences in Belgium and Bulgaria). We are currently exploring various ways to discuss and disseminate our research results, including open access venues.

April 2020

Online collaborative work – Research seminars (discussion of drafts prepared within the project).
Conferences scheduled for the next few months have either been postponed or canceled. For example, one conference scheduled in March (19-21 March) has been rescheduled in October (15-17 October). Mihnea Dobre prepared a paper on Depicting Cartesian Cosmology in the Seventeenth Century, but the event will take place after the end date of the project (9 October 2020).
In order to replace the traditional working environment with virtual work, we are currently switching to online collaborative work. A result is the exhibition on Cartesian cosmological illustrations, which is available here (currently in a test phase, with some updates scheduled for the end of April and significant changes in mid-May): https://cartesian.unibuc.ro/s/cosmologicalillustrations/page/welcome.
Outreach activity include a blog-platform (in Romanian) hosted on the same online platform as the Cartesian cosmological illustrations collection: https://cartesian.unibuc.ro/s/cosmologii-carteziene/page/home. We’ll post once per month. The text for April is Cosmologia carteziană și fizica mozaică (by Mihnea Dobre).
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Seneca și Epicur în carantină. Actualitatea exercițiilor spirituale. Vorbitori: Andrei Cornea, Dana Jalobeanu, Grigore Vida (3 aprilie 2020).
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Dante în vinerea mare. O discuție despre „Divina Comedie”. Vorbitori: Horia-Roman Patapievici, Dana Jalobeanu, Grigore Vida (17 aprilie 2020).
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Tentația demiurgiei. Reîntemeierile filosofiei în modernitate (Descartes). Vorbitori: Mihai Maci, Dana Jalobeanu, Grigore Vida (24 aprilie 2020).

May 2020

Online collaborative work – Research seminars (discussion of drafts prepared within the project).
Expanded the online platform:
- the exhibition on Cartesian cosmological illustrations, which is available here. The May updates include consolidating the metadata, test several Omeka modules, add links to external sources, add cross-references between items on the platform: https://cartesian.unibuc.ro/s/cosmologicalillustrations/.
- on the outreach site (in Romanian), the May post is Johannes Amerpoel, Cartesius Mosaizans, by Ioana Bujor.
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Utopie și ironie. Cum l-a citit Morus pe Platon? Vorbitori: Andrei Cornea, Dana Jalobeanu, Grigore Vida (8 mai 2020).

June 2020

Expanded the online platform:
- consolidate the metadata annotations.
- we were facing some technical issues (i.e., display of images in the virtual exhibition), which postponed our work to add more content.
- added a document to present the virtual exhibition.
- on the outreach site (in Romanian), the June post is Ovidiu Babeș’s Fizică celestă și polemică copernicană.
Dobre, Mihnea; Babeș, Ovidiu; Bujor, Ioana. (2020, June 5). Cartesian Cosmological Illustrations: a digital approach. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3878938
Dobre, Mihnea. 2020. ‘Andrea Strazzoni. Dutch Cartesianism and the Birth of Philosophy of Science: From Regius to ’s Gravesande.’ HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, June. https://doi.org/10.1086/710186.
Members of the team have attended the meetings of the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar online.

July 2020

Expanded work on the online platform – supplement the collection:
- Correct, test, and supplement metadata.
- Added new sources to the collection, which now includes: Principia philosophia (1644) – 44 illustrations; Les Principes de la philosophie (1647) – 10 illustrations; Le Monde (1664) – 32 illustrations; Les Principes de la philosophie (1659) – 45 illustrations; Renati Des-Cartes Principia Philosophiae (1664) – 38 illustrations; Les Principes de la philosophie (1668) – 45 illustrations; Le Monde (1677) – 32 illustrations. Total of illustrations from 7 seventeenth-century editions of the Principles and the World: 246.
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Augustin: Ultimul antic și primul modern. Vorbitori: Alexander Baumgarten, Mihai Maci, Dana Jalobeanu, Grigore Vida (10 iulie 2020).
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Adevăr științific și relativism. Vorbitori: Vlad Zografi, Andrei Cornea, Grigore Vida (24 iulie 2020).
Members of the team have attended the meetings of the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar online.
Virtual research seminar.

August 2020

Expanded work on the online platform:
- Added new sources: Principia Philosophiae (1650) – 43 illustrations and Lettres de M. Descartes, 3 volumes (1657-1667) – 331 illustrations. Total of illustrations included on the platform: 620 images.
- Added a new section of the website, as a showcase of the possibilities opened by the digital collection: Comparisons (Principles).
- On the outreach site (in Romanian), the last blog post is Adevărurile eterne în gândirea platoniştilor de la Cambridge by Bogdan Deznan.
Papers submitted to journals and publishing houses.

September 2020

Papers submitted to journals and publishing houses.
Research on the online platform – added a timeline on the About page.
A new blogpost has been uploaded on the outreach website: Descartes și proiectul unei interpretări a cosmogoniei biblice: o ipoteză cu privire la cronologie by Grigore Vida.
Organising the conference Cartesian Approaches to Cosmology in Early Modern Europe (virtual event, in roundtable format, at the ICUB-Humanities, 20 September 2020, Bucharest, 11:00-13:00).
- Babeș, Ovidiu; Ioana Bujor, Bogdan Deznan, Mihnea Dobre, Grigore Vida. Roundtable discussion on “Cartesian Approaches to Cosmology in Early Modern Europe” (30 September 2020).
Members of the team have attended the meetings of the Princeton-Bucharest Seminar online.
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Insula lui Robinson, cu Dana Jalobeanu, Sorana Corneanu și Grigore Vida (4 septembrie 2020).
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Alchimia: între piatra filosofală și știința modernă. Dana Jalobeanu și Grigore Vida în dialog cu Georgiana Hedeșan și Oana Matei (11 septembrie 2020).
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Cum ajunge știința la public? Tipuri de popularizare a științei. Dana Jalobeanu și Grigore Vida în dialog cu Adrian Stănică și Vlad Zografi (18 septembrie 2020).
Vida, Grigore, Seria „Cafeneaua filosofică”: Punți între „cele două culturi”: istoria științei și/sau „popular science”? Invitați: Sorana Corneanu, Vlad Zografi, Mihnea Boștină și Sorin Bangu. Moderatori: Dana Jalobeanu și Grigore Vida. Emisiune în cadrul Bucharest Science Festival (25 septembrie 2020).

October-December 2020

Dobre, Mihnea, “Depicting Cartesian Cosmology in the Seventeenth Century” in the conference on Cartesian Images. Picturing Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Age, Leuven (15 October 2020).
Added a new set of illustrations on the online platform: : Renati Des-Cartes opera philosophica. Principia Philosophiae (1664, E. Weyerstraten and J. Janssonius van Waesberge) – 35 images.

Published Results

Babeș, Ovidiu. “Playing with the Ancients: The Cosmology of Gilles Personne de Roberval.” Perspectives on Science (July 2022), https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00565.
Bujor, Ioana. Între peshat și sola Scriptura în Tratatul teologico-politic (Capitolul VII): traducere și interpretare. București: Editura Universității din București. 2020.
Bujor, Ioana. “Book review of Jetze Touber, Spinoza and Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1660-1710, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.” JEMS (Journal of Early Modern Studies), Volume 9, Issue 1 (Spring 2020).
Bujor, Ioana. “Johannes Amerpoel and Géraud de Cordemoy: The Meaning of nefesh in Two Cartesian Reconstructions of Genesis I.” Lias 48 (1), pp. 1-34, 2021. doi: 10.2143/LIAS.48.1.3290519.
Deznan, Bogdan-Antoniu. “The God of Universal Goodness in Henry More and the Cambridge Origenists” în That Miracle of the Christian World, Origenism and Christian Platonism in Henry More (Adamantiana 12), ed. Christian Hengstermann, Münster: Aschendorff, 2020.
Deznan, Bogdan-Antoniu. “The Eternal Truths in Henry More and Ralph Cudworth.” JEMS (Journal of Early Modern Studies), Volume 11, Issue 1 (Spring 2022), pp. 93-114.
Dobre, Mihnea. ‘Andrea Strazzoni. Dutch Cartesianism and the Birth of Philosophy of Science: From Regius to ’s Gravesande.’ HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, Vo. 10, No. 2, 2020.
Dobre, Mihnea. “Cordemoy, Géraud de.” In Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, edited by Dana Jalobeanu and Charles T. Wolfe. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021.
Dobre, Mihnea. Cosmologia carteziană, București: Editura Universității din București, 2021.
Dobre, Mihnea. “Strategies of Dissemination for Cartesian Cosmology: Philosophy, Theology and ‘Mosaic physics’.” JEMS (Journal of Early Modern Studies), Volume 9, Issue 1 (Spring 2020).
Dobre, Mihnea. “Review: The Cartesian Semantics of The Port Royal Logic by John M. Martin.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2020.
Dobre, Mihnea; Babeș, Ovidiu; Bujor, Ioana. (2020, June 5). Cartesian Cosmological Illustrations: a digital approach (version 2: November 2020). Zenodo.
Vida, Grigore (ed.). JEMS (Journal of Early Modern Studies), Volume 9, Issue 1 (Spring 2020).
The online platform Cartesian cosmological illustrations: https://cartesian.unibuc.ro/s/cosmologicalillustrations.
Other papers are under review or in the final stages of the publication process.