Teleology in Seventeenth Century Natural Philosophy

FAIN: FT-54985-07

Laurence Carlin
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh (Oshkosh, WI 54901-3551)

I am researching and writing about the retention of the Aristotelian teleological framework in some of the leading thinkers of the early modern intellectual revolution: Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), Robert Boyle (1627-91), Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and George Berkeley (1685-1753). The aims of the project are two, historical and philosophical. The historical objective is to understand how the teleological views of these thinkers emerge from their Aristotelian predecessors in the context of the Scientific Revolution. The philosophical goal is to understand the arguments employed by these philosophers for their respective positions. There is no book-length treatment of this topic in the literature. This project seeks to fill that gap.