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  1. Sympathetic action in the seventeenth century: human and natural.Chris Meyns - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations (1):1-16.
    The category of sympathy marks a number of basic divisions in early modern approaches to action explanations, whether for human agency or for change in the wider natural world. Some authors were critical of using sympathy to explain change. They call such principles “unintelligible” or assume they involve “mysterious” action at a distance. Others, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, appeal to sympathy to capture natural phenomena, or to supply a backbone to their metaphysics. Here I discuss (...)
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  2. Leibniz and Probability in the Moral Domain.Chris Meyns - 2016 - In Lloyd Strickland, Erik Vynckier & Julia Weckend (eds.), Tercentenary Essays on the Philosophy & Science of G.W. Leibniz. Cham: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 229-253.
    Leibniz’s account of probability has come into better focus over the past decades. However, less attention has been paid to a certain domain of application of that account, that is, the application of it to the moral or ethical domain—the sphere of action, choice and practice. This is significant, as Leibniz had some things to say about applying probability theory to the moral domain, and thought the matter quite relevant. Leibniz’s work in this area is conducted at a high level (...)
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  3. ‘Data’ in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions, 1665–1886.Chris Meyns - 2019 - Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science.
    Was there a concept of data before the so-called ‘data revolution’? This paper contributes to the history of the concept of data by investigating uses of the term ‘data’ in texts of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions for the period 1665–1886. It surveys how the notion enters the journal as a technical term in mathematics, and charts how over time it expands into various other scientific fields, including Earth sciences, physics and chemistry. The paper argues that in these texts the (...)
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