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The Animate and Mechanical Models of Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

Ben Jonson, writing before 1641 in Discoveries, observed that nature intends us no courtesies. The rivers carry our boats, the winds favour our sails, and the sunlight warms our bodies, by necessary motions that contain no kindliness. This represented, or expressed, though perhaps unwittingly and certainly without scientific precision, the mechanical version of physical nature that steadily prevailed during the seventeenth century.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1927

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