Offers an extremely bold, far-reaching, and unsuspected thesis in the history of philosophy: Aristotelianism was a dominant movement of the British philosophical landscape, especially in the field of logic, and it had a long survival. British Aristotelian doctrines were strongly empiricist in nature, both in the theory of knowledge and in scientific method; this character marked and influenced further developments in British philosophy at the end of the century, and eventually gave rise to what we now call British empiricism, which is represented by philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Beyond the apparent and explicit criticism of the old Scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy, which has been very well recognized by the scholarship in the twentieth century and which has contributed to the false notion that early modern philosophy emerged as a reaction to Aristotelianism, the present research examines the continuity, the original developments and the impact of Aristotelian doctrines and terminology in logic and epistemology as the background for the rise of empiricism.Without the Aristotelian tradition, without its doctrines, and without its conceptual elaborations, British empiricism would never have been born. The book emphasizes that philosophy is not defined only by the ‘great names’, but also by minor authors, who determine the intellectual milieu from which the canonical names emerge. It considers every single published work of logic between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century, being acquainted with a number of surviving manuscripts and being well-informed about the best existing scholarship in the field. ​

A defense of the social operation of thinking, with an emphasis on testimony and authority.This book describes a lost tradition that can be called reasonableness. The tradition began with Aristotle, was recommended to Western education by Augustine, flourished in the schools of the Renaissance through the nineteenth century, then got lost in the academic and philosophic shuffles of the twentieth century. Representative of the tradition is John Locke''s story of a King of Siam who rejected reports of the existence of ice. The King would have hadto risk too much trust in another man whom he did not know too well -- a Dutch ambassador -- in order to believe that elephants could walk on cold water. John Locke presented the story to encourage his readers to think about theresponsibilities and risks entailed in what he called ''the gentle and fair ways of information.'' The art of thinking is largely social. Popular textbook writers such as Quintilian, Boethius, Philipp Melanchthon, John of St.Thomas, Antoine Arnauld, Thomas Reid, Isaac Watts, Richard Whately, William Hamilton, L. Susan Stebbings, and Max Black taught strategies of belief, trust, assent, and even submission as part of reasonableness. For over two thousand years testimony and authority were at the center of lively discussions about teaching the art of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University. Hamilton, L. Susan Stebbings, and Max Black taught strategies of belief, trust, assent, and even submission as part of reasonableness. For over two thousand years testimony and authority were at the center of lively discussions about teaching the art of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University.uld, Thomas Reid, Isaac Watts, Richard Whately, William Hamilton, L. Susan Stebbings, and Max Black taught strategies of belief, trust, assent, and even submission as part of reasonableness. For over two thousand years testimony and authority were at the center of lively discussions about teaching the art of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University. Hamilton, L. Susan Stebbings, and Max Black taught strategies of belief, trust, assent, and even submission as part of reasonableness. For over two thousand years testimony and authority were at the center of lively discussions about teaching the art of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University.t of thinking. In the twentieth century the tradition faltered largely due to Immanuel Kant''s insistence that there should be no distinction between handling testimony and personal experience. This book recounts the history of a lively educational tradition and hopes to encourage its revival. Rick Kennedy, whose previous books and articles have beenabout Colonial American logic, mathematics, and science, is Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University.

In his 1955 examination of Jonathan Edwards' formative years, Morris undertook a corrective of the prevailing view of Edwards' relation to John Locke. The result is an analysis of the intellectual milieu inhabited by Edwards during the years in which his philosophical vocabulary and his seminal theological concepts evolved. Long an unpublished dissertation, this massive work reflects that most unusual combination of being a pioneering exploration and, most likely, a definitive evaluation. Dr. Kenneth Minkema, Executive Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University Other scholars have filled in our picture of Jonathan Edwards' mental world, adding new shades, hues and detail to our view of the young theologian. But no one matches William Morris's Young Jonathan Edwards for comprehension and virtuosity. His study is as rewarding as it is challenging. The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University deserves our thanks for bringing this masterpiece back to us. Douglas A. Sweeney, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Written at the onset of the academic recovery of Jonathan Edwards, William Morris's Chicago dissertation remains the best record of the young Edwards from his years at home and at Yale to his months at the Scots Presbyterian Church in New York, altogether an extensive reconstruction of how he came to think the way he did. That it will be widely available now is a welcome recovery in itself. - M.X. Lesser, Emeritus, Northeastern University William Sparkes Morris wrote The Young Jonathan Edwards as a dissertation at the University of Chicago and completed it in 1955. His dissertation was originally published in 1991 as part of the Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion, edited by Martin Mary and Jerald C. Brauer. Morris died in 1983 at the age of 67.

This book discusses the intersection of the great military and intellectual disruptions of the mid-seventeenth century. It examines how the Thirty Years' War scattered representatives of Ramism from central Europe into old and new institutions, especially into the northwest, the Dutch Republic, and England.