CFP: Matter and Perception (Early Science and Medicine)

Early Science and Medicine is seeking contributions for a special issue on “Matter and Perception”
 
Guest editors: Michael Deckard and Doina-Cristina Rusu
Deadline: 1st of August 2016
 
The origins of thinking about matter in early modern Europe did not begin with Francis Bacon, René Descartes, or Anne Conway, but these thinkers formulated systems of matter that replaced Aristotelian form. The characteristics of matter began to be measured, studied, observed, anatomized, or imbued with life, essentially replacing form as an explanatory principle. This development in the history of philosophy, science and culture has been told in different ways, depending on from what perspective the story is based. One way of telling it is to look at the English experimental background starting with Bacon and continuing through Boyle, Newton, and the Royal Society. Another story could be told through the Cartesian development of causation, continuing through Malebranche and Hume. Still another might look at the roots of vitalism. Whether with regards to the senses, sympathy, electricity, gravity, or magnetism, this special issue seeks papers concerning the roots of the relation between matter and perception.
 
Early Science and Medicine (ESM) is a peer-reviewed international journal dedicated to the history of science, medicine and technology from the earliest times through to the end of the eighteenth century. The need to treat in a single journal all aspects of scientific activity and thought to the eighteenth century is due to two factors: to the continued importance of ancient sources throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period, and to the comparably low degree of specialization and the high degree of disciplinary interdependence characterizing the period before the professionalization of science. The journal, which concerns itself mainly with the Western, Byzantine and Arabic traditions, is particularly interested in emphasizing these elements of continuity and interconnectedness, and it encourages their diachronic study from a variety of viewpoints, including commented text editions and monographic studies of historical figures and scientific questions or practices. The main language of the journal is English, although contributions in French and German are also accepted.
 
For Guidelines to Contributors click here.
For further information on Early Science and Medicine, see http://www.brill.com/early-science-and-medicine