CfP: HOPOS Special Issue: Animism and Its Discontents: Soul-Based Explanations in Early-Modern Philosophy and Medicine

CfP: HOPOS Special Issue: Animism and Its Discontents: Soul-Based Explanations in Early-Modern Philosophy and Medicine

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2019

This special issue will explore varieties of animism in the natural philosophy of Western Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Our focus is “natural-philosophical animism,” the position that the soul, along with its faculties and powers, is integral to the functioning of nature as a whole, or to the functioning of some natural entities.

We ask contributors to consider how animist conceptions of the soul and of the soul’s involvement in nature were transformed throughout this period, sometimes by thinkers who were not invariably animists themselves. We invite analysis of how these transformations manifested controversies within the scientific enterprise that concerned not just the theory, but also the practice and social context of natural philosophy and medicine. Although the term “animism” originally emerged in the eighteenth century as a general term for a variety of positions challenging mechanism and materialism, animism frequently went hand in hand with forms of mechanism and materialism.

This issue will therefore be devoted to investigating animism not as a monolithic category, but rather as a variety of positions offering very different pictures of the soul, of matter and of the workings of nature, all of which actively contributed to, rather than merely hampered, the development and transformation of natural philosophy in early modernity.

Details and Submission:

  • The word limit for submissions is 7,000 words.
  • The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2019.
  • To submit an article to HOPOS, please first see the Instructions for Authors.
  • The article submission system is here.
  • Please choose “Modern Animism” under “Article Type” when submitting to the special issue.

To read the latest issue of HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, click here.

Advisory Editors: 

Boris DEMAREST (University of Amsterdam) boris.demarest@hotmail.be
Jonathan REGIER (Ghent University) jonathan.regier@ugent.be
Charles WOLFE (Ghent University) ctwolfe1@gmail.com.

If you have questions about the Special Issue, please write to hoposjournal@gmail.com.

To download the announcement poster, click here.

 

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