Andrea Sangiacomo
I'm Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at Groningen. I work mainly on the history of early modern philosophy and science.
Location Groningen, NL
Activity
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Andrea Sangiacomo replied to Graham Jones
Graham, thanks for the comment. The idea is that IF you have background in modern science you can use the historical materials and discussions covered in this course to put in historical perspective what you already know. IF you don't have this background, than you can just use the materials covered here. The idea was to make the assignment as inclusive as...
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Andrea Sangiacomo replied to Edwin Relf
Edwin, I intended to present Boyle's view, not my own. Boyle was a genuine defender of final causes and he thought that final causes provide a strong argument for the acknowledgment of God's providence in the natural world. In fact, he believed that without God's providential guidance, matter alone could never produce such a refined and highly structured...
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Andrea Sangiacomo replied to Gordon Dyne
Tony, you're right, there were a lot of criticisms of Aristotle before the 17th century. However, most scholastic authors aimed to correct, adjust and improve the overall Aristotelian framework rather than overthrowing it. This is more a strategic or ideological attitude: for scholastics it was important to defend and consolidate some form of consensus about...
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Andrea Sangiacomo replied to Peter Jenner
Peter, there is no 'nonsense'. All of these issues are genuine problems who puzzled generations of philosophers for centuries, so there is probably no ultimately 'unproblematic' solution. In my previous comments, I was just providing some further historical context to Descartes' own position. Re Spinoza: that's another interesting issue. Spinoza doesn't seem...
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Andrea Sangiacomo replied to Peter Jenner
Hi Peter, Descartes' line of thought was not based on God's indifference towards creation (a line of thought that was taken to be not acceptable in the 17th century context, because of theological reasons). The idea is that eternal truths are created, as anything else, by God himself. And at the moment of creation, God could have decided otherwise and he was...
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Andrea Sangiacomo replied to Peter Jenner
This is an interesting point, Peter. While Descartes' conception of God is a philosophical one (so not directly linked with Holy Scripture), Descartes holds the rather radical view according to which God's will is absolutely free and it creates even eternal truths. This means that 2+2=4 only because (and IF) God establishes so. Of course, Descartes is ready to...
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Well spotted Michael! There was a typo indeed, the expression should be "to be certain as the fact that the internal angles of a triangle are equal to 180 degrees".
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Edward, that is totally ok. These *are* very difficult texts and being puzzled by historical texts is the first step to realize that they need a lot of philosophical reflection to be fully understood. This is on the challenges in doing history of philosophy and science.
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Andrea Sangiacomo replied to Clare Fletcher
Hi Clare, yes that line comes from another course indeed. Well spotted! Sorry if it created any confusion, I corrected the article now.
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Andrea Sangiacomo made a comment
pleasure, good, energy
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Andrea Sangiacomo made a comment
Hallo, Ik ben Andrea. Ik kom uit Italië. Ik woon in Groningen al twee jaar. Ik ben negenentwintig jaar. Ik werk aan de universiteit.
