for Advanced Studies
Annual Lecture
27 October 2020

Photo: UHH/SUB HH
We would like to invite you to MCAS's Annual Lecture on October 27, 2020, at 18:00. Gianni Paganini (Università del Piemonte Orientale) will give the lecture "Facts, Fictions, and Hypotheses: Hume’s Scepticism and Newton’s Method in the 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'"
Abstract
The experimental theist Cleanthes and the sceptical Philo in the Dialogues, along with Epicurus in the oration of the First Inquiry, all address the same problem and endorse the same epistemology. Both the method and the argument come from Newton’s Principia: the former is derived from the famous regulae philosophandi, while the latter comes from the Scholium generale appended to the third book of the Principia. Both the theologians of the Boyle lectures and Newton himself in the Scholium generale had established a close connection between the use of induction, the rejection of hypotheses, the argument from design or final causes, and the conception of a “living, intelligent, powerful being” that governs the world. It is notable that Newton did not hesitate to include God among the objects of “natural philosophy.” The Dialogues represent a challenge to this Newtonian “experimental theism”, but they also aim at rehabilitating the function of hypotheses in response to Newton’s famous veto, albeit in a new form that is compatible with the scepticism endorsed by the protagonist of the work, Philo. This new reading of the Dialogues centred on Philo’s “hypotheticism” sheds more light on the meaning and scope of the work.
Gianni Paganini is professor of the history of philosophy at the Università del Piemonte Orientale (Vercelli) and a fellow of the research centre at the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome).
Date
October 27, 2020
18:00: Lecture [via Zoom]
Venue
Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies
Schlüterstraße 51/5th floor
Seminar Room 5060
20146 Hamburg
Poster
[PDF]
Please register for access via zoom
maimonides-centre"AT"uni-hamburg.de