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The Catena aurea entium of Henry of Herford is part of the work of re-elaboration of Aristotle’s natural-philosophical corpus, which characterised the European intellectual environment in the Late Middle Ages. In the central books of his encyclopaedia, Henry comments on the works of natural philosophy of Albert the Great, placing himself in continuity with the cultural project started by Albert in Cologne. The present article aims to compare the 5th book of the Catena aurea entium, which consists of a comment per modum quaestionis on the Meteora of Albert the Great, with some meteorological quaestiones composed between the 13th and 15th centuries. This analysis will lead me to grasp the philosophical orientations and interpretation of Henry and also his reception of Albert the Great’s meteorology. In the 5th book, Henry introduces an extensive medical section taken from the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, in which he applies the Galenic medical principles to meteorology. Besides, in the quaestio 105 (V 1 105), he interprets Albert through the theological-poetic explanation of ancient origins on the sacrality of the number three and an excerpt from the Liber proverbiorum.

The Argument of the “Perpetual Miracle” and its Theological Implications: on Leibniz-Malebranche Relationships. One of Leibniz’s strongest arguments against the Occasionalists (including Malebranche) is that, since they see all natural laws only as constant connections, Occasionalists are unable to distinguish a natural law from a constantly repeated miracle (argument of the “perpetual miracle”). The paper shows that Leibniz’s argument is not entirely adequate as a criticism of Malebranche, in that it stems from a theology that is quite different to that of Malebranche. For Malebranche, miracles are the effects of God’s “particular will” and are quite different even from God’s legal distribution of Grace. A miracle ruled by a law is, therefore, a conceptual impossibility. To Leibniz, miracles include everything that overrules creatures and their forces. Miracles may thus be governed by laws and, indeed, all miracles performed by God in our world are regulated by the laws of Leibniz’s Kingdom of Grace.

The aim of this article is to unveil the ways of teaching new philosophical paradigms in Dutch Universities between Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, by means of an analysis of the uses of illustrations in Cartesian and Newtonian natural-philosophical textbooks. This analysis allows to understand the overall functions of philosophical textbooks, where illustrations act as (a) conceptual means, filling the gap between the premise of a theory and its actual contents; (b) didactic means, aiming to help the reader in understanding scientific models fully explained in texts; (c) promoting or propagandistic instruments, useful to present theories in a fascinating way. Eventually, I argue for a positive correlation of the use of illustrations and the introduction of new philosophies, and for the existence of non-philosophical reasons for such use: as to the propagandistic function of illustrations intended as decorative means.

The basic concept in the philosophy of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker is the concept of time. Playing the dominant role in the thought and philosophy of Weizsäcker, the concept is the point of departure for an attempt to find ways to cognize and recreate the unity of Nature, to understand “the unity of physics” and its reconstruction in the neo-Kantian spirit, as well as seek and analyse conditions of the possibilities of science and its ethical dimension. In this context Weizsäcker analyses relations between the structure of time and the ethical responsibility of a man practising science. The present study aims to demonstrate the basic elements of this relation as the foundation of the ethics of scientific research. Responsible scientific research is only possible when men operating within the field are guided by objective principles of the ethics of responsibility.

In Timaeus 49, Plato sympathetically describes Anaximenes’ theory of matter, with its seven states of matter, its contrary mechanisms of rarefaction and condensation, and notion that the birth of one elements is the death of another. Plato treats Anaximenes as a kind of philosopher of process rather than a material monist, as Aristotle portrays him. From this perspective, Anaximenes can be seen as a forerunner of Heraclitus rather than of Diogenes of Apollonia. Plato seems to introduce Anaximenes’ theory as an approximation of his own theory of matter. Plato’s interpretation may be inspired by the readings of Cratylus and other Heracliteans and have its roots in a pre-Parmenidean world-view. Although it conflicts with Aristotle’s better-known and more Eleatic interpretation, Plato’s interpretation is at least as old, and deserves serious consideration as the only other early understanding of Anaximenes.

This article examines the action of the Lusitanian crown, to promote, in 1783, the travel of Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira into America, to collect and describe animals, plants and minerals, besides delimiting frontiers in litigation with Spain. The article also allows us to rediscuss that classic perspective of the Lusitanian’s Enlightenment as a tardy and shy movement.

The paper tries to point out Getaldić’s contribution to transformation of modern science by systematic analysis of the work Promotus Archimedes. The mentioned work was the subject of multiple analyses in the area of history of physics, but without comprehensive interpretation. That is why the mentioned work was in this paper analyzed at couple of levels and from different viewpoints putting it into general philosophical frameworks and studying its epistemological ranges. It turned out that Getaldić’s style of presenting physical sources by geometrical methods was the early indication of geometrical method expansion to different areas of the 17th century philosophy. Besides introducing mathematics in describing physical problems, the second important characteristics of the work is also pointed out and that is its experimental foundation enabled by the real measurements. Getaldić’s approach in this physical work is characteristic for modern research of natural sciences and the work Promotus Archimedes fits into general philosophical tendencies of the period in which it was made.

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