Pierre-Sylvain Régis’s Cartesianism is quite singular in seventeenth-century French philosophy. Though, can we speak of a form of experimental science in Régis’s work? After exploring his notions of ‘system’ and ‘hypothesis’, I will define his position in relation to Claude Perrault, Jacques Rohault, and the Royal Society. I argue, first, that the contrasts which traverse French science are not so much about the use of experiments but about whether or not observational data can be traced back to hypotheses and to a coherent system. Secondly, that we can detect a significant similarity between Boyle’s positions and the views expressed by Perrault and also by Régis. Lastly, that French science, even in its Cartesian version, is much more probabilistic than English experimental philosophy.
University of Torino, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-9771-387X
Titolo del capitolo
System, Hypothesis, and Experiments: Pierre-Sylvain Régis
Autori
Antonella Del Prete
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0169-8.09
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Reading Descartes
Sottotitolo del libro
Consciousness, Body, and Reasoning
Curatori
Andrea Strazzoni, Marco Sgarbi
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
206
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0169-8
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0168-1
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0169-8
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0170-4
Collana
Knowledge and its Histories