The Age of Epistemology: Aristotelian Logic in Early Modern Philosophy 1500-1700

Marco Sgarbi tells a new history of epistemology from the Renaissance to Newton through the impact of Aristotelian scientific doctrines on key figures including Galileo Galilei, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton.

This history illuminates the debates philosophers had on deduction, meditation, regressus, syllogism, experiment and observation, the certainty of mathematics and the foundations of scientific knowledge. Sgarbi focuses on the Aristotelian education key philosophers received, providing a concrete historical framework through which to read epistemological re-definitions, developments and transformations over three centuries. The Age of Epistemology further highlights how Aristotelianism itself changed over time by absorbing doctrines from other philosophical traditions and generating a variety of interpretations in the process.

Marco Sgarbi is Professor of the History of Philosophy at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy.