Justin E. H. Smith

Experiment, Culture and the History of Philosophy

A guest post for the Early Modern Experimental Philosophy Research Project at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

A question of central methodological importance for the historian of philosophy concerns the appropriate relationship between the aspects of philosophy’s past that a scholar takes on, on the one hand, and on the other the current agenda of non-historical philosophy. Recently, in the results of a query launched by Mark Lance at the NewAPPS blog, my own deep worry about the state of the discipline was confirmed: a good many non-historian philosophers believe that, at the end of the day, history-of-philosophy scholarship should make itself relevant to the cluster of questions currently being investigated in philosophy. I could not disagree more strongly. To riff on John F. Kennedy’s famous line, I believe that we should not be asking what the history of philosophy can do for us, but rather what we can do for the history of philosophy. That is, we should be attempting to do justice to past thinkers by carefully reconstructing their own world of concerns. In doing so, we shall often have to move beyond the boundaries of what we consider philosophy (and even of what they considered philosophy).

I have argued in many fora that we should respect the historical usage of the term ‘philosophy’. Some have objected that it is a semantic issue –as in, a mere semantic issue– what might have been called by a certain name in another era. What is important, they say, is whether the activity so-called in fact has any continuity with what we are doing when we do philosophy. To some today, the discontinuity seems most evident when we consider early modern experimental philosophy. There simply is no meaningful sense, they maintain, in which we can think of meteorology as a proper part of philosophy, even if this is how it was conceived in the history of natural philosophy from Aristotle through (at least) Boyle.

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Leibniz's Medical, Physiological, and Life-Scientific Works: A Catalog

This catalog is still in progress, and suggestions for additions are welcome. Eventually, I hope to include links to mss. and to available editions. I include only those texts that are entirely or principally devoted to life-scientific questions. 

Conventional Title	Manuscript Number, Publication Information, or Bibliographical Reference	Year of Composition	Subjects
Directiones ad rem medicam pertinentes	LH III, 1, 3, folio 1-9; Hartmann and Krüger 1976	1671	Medicine; public health
Bedenken von aufrichtung einer Academie oder Societät in Teütschland, zu Aufnehmen der Künste und Wißenschaften	A IV i, 543-552	1671	Medicine; public health
Excerptum ex autographo     Cartesii	LH III 2, 5 49	24 February, 1676	Embryology; physiology
Excerptum ex autographo Cartesii: Remedia, et vires medicamentorum	LH III 4, 3 1	24 February, 1676	Pharmacology
Note on the origins of fossils	LH XXXVII 4, 16	1672-77(??)	Paleontology
“Le phosphore de M. Krafft ou Liqueur de terre seiche de sa composition qui iettent continuellement de grands éclats de lumère”	Journal des Sçavans, August 2, 1677, 190-91	1677	Chemistry (fermentation)
Machina animalis	LH III 5, 12; Pasini 1996	3 October, 1677	Animal economy
“Extrait d’une lettre de Mr. de Leibniz, à l’auteur du Journal des Savans, écrite d’Hanovre le 18. Juin, 1677. Contenant la Rélation, et la figure d’un Chevreuil coëffé d’une manière fort extaordinaire”	Dutens II 2, 175-76	1677	Animal economy; ethology
De animalibus	LH 37, 2, 123	1672-6	Animal economy
Review of Jungius’s Harmonica et phytoscopia scripta posthuma Joachimi Jungii	Ravier 195 / KM 53	August, 1678	Botany, Taxonomy
Corpus hominis et aliuscujusque animalis est machina quaedam	LH III 1, 2; Mahrenholtz 1987; Pasini 1996; Smith 2007	1682-86	Animal economy
De scribendis novis Medicinae elementis	LH III 1, 1; Pasini 1996	1682-83	Animal economy; medicine
Excerpt of a letter from M. de Leibniz, “touchant une expérience considérable d’une eau fumante”	Journal des Sçavans, 17 February, 1681, 46.	1681	Chemistry (fermentation, perpetual motion)
“G. G. L. Meditatio de Separatione Salis et aquae dulcis, novoque Separationum Chymicarum genere”	Acta Erudtiorum, December, 1682, 386-88; Dutens II 2, 108-10.	1682	Chemistry (mixtures)
Four letters to Schelhammer	Dutens II 2, 164-8	1680-82	Generation theory; medicine
“Observatio de usu intestini coeci in figurandis, quorundam animalium excrementis. Ex Transactionibus sive Actis Philosophicis Anglicis”	Acta Eruditorum, June 1685, 313-15.	June, 1685	Physiology
Notes on Martin Lister’s article in the Philosophical Transactions of 1683/4, “Observatio de usu intestini coeci in figurandis quorundam animalium excrementis”	Acta Eruditorum August, 1685, 351-53; Ravier 200; MK 75	July, 1685	Physiology
Letter to Hertel	Guhrauer B II 458	1691	Medicine
“Extrait d’une lettre sur la maniére de perfectionner la Médecine”	Journal des Sçavans 1694; Dutens II 2, 162-4	1694	Medicine; public health
De ortu et antiquissimo statu rerum naturalium in regionibus Brunsvic.-Luneb. Dissertatio [Later published as Protogaea]	Scheidt 1749; Engelhardt 1949; Barrande 1993; Cohen and Wakefield, 2008	1691-93.	Paleontology; generation theory.
“G. G. L. Relatio ad Inclytam Societatem Leopoldinam Naturae Curiosorum, de novo antidysenterico Americano magnis successibus comprobato”	LH III 4, 4; Misc. Acad. Nat. Cur., 1695-96, decuria 3, iii, 1-22; Dutens II 2, 110-19.	1696	Pharmacology; medicine; botany
Letter to J. G. Sparwenfeld	Otium Hanoveranum	29 January, 1697	Physical anthropology
De methodo botanica (Letter to A. C. Gackenholtz)	Monatlicher Auszug April, 1701 VIII S.68-80; Kortholt 4, 83-194; Dutens II 2, 169-74.	April, 1701	Botany; taxonomy
“Summarische Punctuation die medicinalische Observationes betr. so durchgehends anzustellen und beständigt fortzusetzen seyn möchten”	Klopp 10, 346-50 / MK 176	23 April, 1701	Public health; medicine
“Verordnung betr. regelmäßige Beobachtungun zur Förderung des Sanitätswesens”	Klopp 10, 350-53 / MK 176	1701	Public health; medicine
“Mémoire sur les pierres qui renferment des plantes et des poissons desséchés”	Histoire de l’Académie des sciences 1704; Dutens II 2 178-9.	1704	Paleontology
De causis febrium	LH III 5, 111-12; Pasini 1996	1704-5	Medicine; animal economy
“Exposé d’une lettre de Mr. Leibniz à l’Abbé de St. Pierre, sur un chien qui parle”	Histoire de l’Académie des sciences 1706; Dutens II 2, 180	1706	Ethology
Animadversiones in G. E. Stahlii Theoria medica vera	Stahl 1720; Duchesneau and Smith (forthcoming)	1709-10	Animal economy; organics
“Commentatio de anima brutorum”	G VII 328-32.	1710	Physiology; animal economy
De secretione animali, ad P. A. Michelottum	Dutens II 2, 89-91	17 September, 1715	Animal economy