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-