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The Crisis of Causality
Voetius and Descartes on God, Nature and Change
Series: - Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, Volume: 66
Author:
The Crisis of Causality deals with the reaction of the Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) to the New Philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650).
Voetius not only criticised the Cartesian idea of a mechanical Universe; he also foresaw that shifting conceptions of natural causality would make it impossible for theologians to explain the relationship between God and Creation in philosophical terms. This threatened the status of theology as a scientific discipline.
Apart from a detailed analysis of the Scholastic and Cartesian notions of causality, the book offers new perspectives on related subjects, such as seventeenth-century university training and the Cartesian method of science. It will be of great importance to any student of seventeenth-century intellectual history, philosophy, theology and history of science.
Voetius not only criticised the Cartesian idea of a mechanical Universe; he also foresaw that shifting conceptions of natural causality would make it impossible for theologians to explain the relationship between God and Creation in philosophical terms. This threatened the status of theology as a scientific discipline.
Apart from a detailed analysis of the Scholastic and Cartesian notions of causality, the book offers new perspectives on related subjects, such as seventeenth-century university training and the Cartesian method of science. It will be of great importance to any student of seventeenth-century intellectual history, philosophy, theology and history of science.
J.A. van Ruler, Ph.D. (1995) in Philosophy, University of Groningen, has published various studies on the history of seventeenth-century philosophy and theology and on the intellectual history of the Dutch Republic.
"...an important book...Van Ruler has accomplished the, alas too rare, feat of writing historically contextualized history of philosophy."
Margaret J. Osler, BJHS, 1997.
Winner of the Praemium Erasmianum 1995.
Margaret J. Osler, BJHS, 1997.
Winner of the Praemium Erasmianum 1995.
All those interested in seventeenth-century philosophy, theology, church history, intellectual history and the history of science, as well as those interested in the reception of Aristotelian and Thomistic ideas in the Renaissance.